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AT  PUBLIC  MEETINGS, 

HELD  IN  THE  CITY  OF  WASHINGTON, 
February  15  and  18,  1840  ; 

WITH  THE  ADDRESS  OF  PHILIP  R.  FENDALL,  ESQ, 


In  pursuance  of  public  notice  and  invitation,  given  through  the  public  prints,  a 
large  number  of  the  citizens  of  the  District  of  Columbia  opposed  to  the  present 
administration  of  the  Government,  and  to  the  re-election  of  Martin  Van  Buren 
as  President  of  the  United  States,  assembled  at  the  old  Theatre,  in  Washington* 
on  Saturday,  the  15th  of  February,  at  II  o’clock  A.  M. 

The  meeting  being  called  to  order  by  Mr.  Richard  S.  Coxe,  Gen.  Roger  C» 
Weightman  was,  upon  the  motion  of  the  same  gentleman,  chosen  President. 

On  motion  : 

Raphael  Semmes,  of  Georgetown, 

William  A.  Bradley, 

William  L.  Brent,  3  r  ,ir 

7  .  n  >ot  Washington, 

Jacob  A.  Bender,  j  b 

Benjamin  Ogle  Tayloe,  3 

Samuel  Isaacs,  of  Alexandria, 

were  chosen  Vice  Presidents;  and  William  Dayman,  of  Georgetown,  and  Richard 
Wallach,  of  Washington,  Secretaries. 

On  motion, 

Resolved,  That  a  committee  of  seven  be  appointed  by  the  President,  to  draught  and  report 
resolutions  for  the  action  of  this  meeting. 

Whereupon  the  President  appointed  the  following  gentlemen  on  the  com¬ 
mittee:  Samuel  Harrison  Smith,  Richard  S.  Coxe,  Philip  R.  Fendall, 
Jacob  Gideon,  jr.,  Dr.  William  Sothoron,  David  A.  Hall, George  Watter- 
ston. 

The  meeting  being  then  addressed  upon  the  subject  of  an  adjournment  to  a  more 
convenient  hour  and  day,  by  Messrs.  William  L.  Brent  and  Richard  S.  Coxe, 
it  was,  on  motion  of  Mr.  Gideon,  adjourned  to  Tuesday  evening  next,  the  18th 
instant,  at  7  o’clock,  P.  M.,  to  receive  the  report  of  the  committee  ;  at  which 
time,  and  at  the  same  place,  a  general  attendance  of  the  citizens  of  the  District 
opposed  to  the  present  Administration  is  invited. 

W1L1  1AM  DAYMAN,  i  « 

RICHARD  WALLACH.  J  Secretaries. 


ADJOURNED  MEETING,— Tuesday,  February  18. 

At  a  quarter  past  seven,  P.M.,  the  president.  General  Weightman,  having  taken 
the  chair,  read  a  communication  from  Alexandria,  staling  that  a  large  number  of 
the  citizens  of  that  town,  intending  to  par'icipaH*  in  die  morning,  had  engaged  a 
steamboat  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  them  to  this  city,  but  that,  on  account  of  the 
density  of  the  fog,  the  boat  would  hoi  venture  out. 


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Mr.  Fexdall,  on  behalf  of  the  committee  appointed  to  draught  and  report  res¬ 
olutions  for  the  action  of  the  meeting,  then  reported  the  following  : 

1.  Resolved ,  That  the  people  of  the  District  of  Columbia,  though  placed  by  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  under  the  “exclusive  legislation”  of  Congress,  are  not  thereby  subjected  to 
the  absolute  dominion  of  the  Federal  Government,  or  of  any  other  power;  that  a  condition  so 
slavish  was  not  contemplated  by  either  their  parent  States  in  ceding  the  territory  now  constitu-. 
ting  said  District,  by  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  in  authorizing  Congress  to  accept,  nor  by 
Congress  in  accepting,  the  cession ;  that  at  any  and  all  times  since  the  adoption  of  the  Constitu¬ 
tion,  a  construction  of  that  instrument  involving  an  anomaly  so  abhorrent  to  its  spirit  would  havo 
been  repudiated  by  Congress  itself,  as  well  as  by  the  whole  people  of  the  United  States,  and  by 
none  of  them  more  indignantly  than  by  the  people  of  Virginia  and  Maryland,  from  which  States 
this  District  was  dismembered ;  and  that,  however  improvident  may  have  been  the  omission  to 
secure  to  the  citizens  of  such  District,  by  a  constitutional  tenure,  the  right  of  suffrage,  it  was  not 
expected  that  they  should  themselves  voluntarily  aggravate  the  evils  of  the  omission  by  feeling- 
no  interest  in  public  affairs  ;  nor  was  it  intended  to  debar  them  from  giving  all  the  force  which 
their  political  circumstances  might  permit,  to  their  opinions  on  the  action  of  the  Federal  Gov¬ 
ernment. 

2.  Resolved ,  That,  on  the  contrary,  the  people  of  the  District  of  Columbia  are  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  holding,  like  their  fellow-citizens  of  the  several  States,  a  deep  stake  in  the  liber¬ 
ties,  the  honor,  and  the  prosperity  of  a  common  country  ;  that,  whatever  may  be  the  degree  of 
their  political  depression,  the  lower  that  degree  the  more  vital  is  their  interest  in  wakening  national 
attention  to  the  conduct  of  rulers  irresponsible  to  themselves ;  that,  as  their  position  is  peculiarly 
favorable  for  observing  the  action  of  the  Federal  Government,  so  the  history  of  the  Federal  Con¬ 
stitution,  their  own  particular  concernment  in  its  administration,  and  their  general  duties  as  citi¬ 
zens  of  the  Union,  admonish  them  to  impart  to  their  fellow-citizens  the  results  of  their  scrutiny; 
and  that  their  destitution  of  the  elective  franchise,  instead  of  impairing  their  right,  or  absolving 
them  from  the  obligation,  of  taking  part  in  national  affairs,  makes  it  their  bounden  duty  to  improve 
the  more  diligently,  and  to  exert  to  the  uttermost,  the  moral  influences  of  their  locality  as  the 
political  centre  of  the  republic. 

3.  Resolved,  That  though  constantly  observant  of  the  action  of  the  Federal  Government,  from 
its  commencement  to  the  present  time,  and  though  occasionally  differing  in  political  opinions 
from  their  rulers  as  well  as  among  themselves,  the  people  of  the  District  of  Columbia  felt  no  suf¬ 
ficient  cause  for  assuming  the  office,  contingently  devolved  on  them  by  the  fathers  of  the  Consti¬ 
tution,  of  sounding  an  alarm  to  their  fellew-citizens,  until  a  comparatively  recent  period ;  when 
an  administrative  system  was  introduced  by  President  Jackson,  and  inexorably  enforced  during 
his  two  official  terms,  operating  a  practical  change  in  the  Constitution,  and  subversive  of  the 
public  liberty,  the  public  morals,  and  the  public  interests;  that  President  Van  Buren,  faithful  to 
his  pledges  “to  tread  generally  in  the  footsteps  of”  his  “illustrious  predecessor,”  has  adopted, 
acted  on,  and  extended  this  system ;  and  that,  therefore,  it  is  our  duty  again,  and  in  yet  louder 
tones,  to  “sound  the  alarm”  to  our  countrymen. 

4.  Resolved,  That,  without  undertaking  to  detail  all  the  causes  of  this  alarm,  we  deem  it  suf¬ 
ficient  to  advert  to  the  following  : 

The  augmentation  of  the  public  expenditures  to  an  extent  wholly  disproportionate  to  the  in¬ 
creased  population  and  business  of  the  country  : 

The  struggle  of  the  President  with  the  people  to  obtain  perpetual  control  over  their  money, 
which  his  predecessor  had  unlawfully  seized — a  “pernicious  project,”  in  name  sub-Treasury,  or 
Independent  Treasury,  but  in  substance  a  Treasury  bank,  independent  of  the  people — a  project 
which  is  obtruded  on  Congress  in  defiance  of  their  repeated  rejections  of  it,  in  defiance  of  the 
public  hatred  to  it,  and  in  defiance  of  the  proved  loss  of  millions  to  the  nation  through  the  infi¬ 
delity  of  sub-treasurers  :  a  project  enforced  by  precedents  raked  up,  under  presidential  dictation, 
among  despotic  Governments  or  starving  communities;  by  presidential  lectures  to  the  State  Le¬ 
gislatures  of  his  own  free  and  heretofore  prosperous  country,  denouncing  their  opposite  policy ; 
and  by  presidential  charges  of  bribery  against  one  of  them  : 

The  retention  in  office  of  proved  defaulters,  and,  in  some  cases,  confessedly  on  account  of  the 
political  influence  of  themselves,  their  relations,  or  friends  : 

The  dispensation  of  Executive  patronage  on  the  principle  that  the  public  offices  are  the  prop¬ 
erty  of  a  party  ;  that  “to  the  victors  belong  the  spoils  of  the  enemy  ;”  that  every  citizen  is  an  en¬ 
emy  of  the  country  who  is  not  a  vassal  of  the  President ;  and  that  the  true  object  of  Government 
is  “to  go  for  the  greatest  share  of  the  spoils  to  the  greatest  number  of  the  spoilers :” 

The  exercise,  by  the  President,  in  derogation  and  even  in  contempt  of  the  co  ordinate  authority 
of  the  Senate,  of  the  appointing  power,  which  was  conferred  by  the  Constitution  on  the  Presi¬ 
dent  and  Senate  jointly ;  the  abuse  of  that  power,  and  of  the  removing  power,  which  was  con¬ 
ferred,  not  by  the  Constitution,  but  by  Congress,  on  the  President  solely,  in  “rewarding  his 
friends  and  punishing  his  enemies ;”  thus  introducing  a  remorseless  Proscription,  which  the  fathers 
of  the  Constitution  had  declared  in  advance  to  be  ground  of  impeachment ;  and  enforcing  that 


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Proscription  by  an  army  of  spies  and  informers  ;  and  in  the  further  abuse  of  the  removing  power, 
committed  in  order  to  gain  possession  of  the  public  money,  in  dismissing  the  officer  to  whose 
charge  it  had  been  entrusted  by  the  people  : 

The  interference  of  federal  officers  in  elections — a  party  service,  the  performance  of  which  has 
been  offered  and  accepted  as  a  valid  excuse  for  neglecting  official  duty;  and  has  been  secured  ia 
the  principal  city  of  the  Union  by  a  tax  on  the  salaries  of  officeholders,  collected  under  the  pen- 
'  alty  of  dismissal,  and  expended  in  electioneering  for  the  President ;  the  defence,  on  principle,  ia 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  by  partisans  of  the  administration,  of  the  interference  of  federal 
officers  in  elections,  after  such  practices,  before  sturdily  denied,  had  been  proved  by  sworn  wit¬ 
nesses  ;  the  now  received  doctrine  that  every  public  officer  holds  his  place  by  the  tenure,  express 
or  implied,  of  electioneering  for  the  President;  and  the  sanction  which  the  President  has  lent  to 
that  doctrine  by  the  force  of  his  own  example  in  abandoning  the  public  business,  and,  on  one 
occasion,  for  four  consecutive  months,  to  electioneer  for  himself : 

The  doctrine  and  practice  of  the  Executive  to  violate  the  Constitution  and  laws  at  pleasure,  on 
the  assumption  that  he  is  bound  to  obey  the  Constitution  only  as  he  chooses  to  understand  it, 
and  to  obey  the  laws  only  as  he  chooses  to  expound  them;  to  defeat  the  will  of  the  people,  ex¬ 
pressed  through  their  constitutional  representatives,  on  the  pretence  that  he  is  their  “ direct  rep¬ 
resentative  ;”  to  prevent  legislation  by  using  arbitrarily,  and  as  an  ordinary  executive  instrument, 
the  veto  power,  which  had  been  created  for  extraordinary  cases,  and  by  withholding  legislative 
bills ;  to  forestall  legislation  by  menacing  Congress,  in  advance,  with  the  veto ;  to  pervert  legis¬ 
lation  by  a  mongrel  species  of  veto,  approving  some  parts  and  disapproving  other  parts  of  the 
same  bill;  to  originate  legislation  ;  to  strangle  Congressional  investigations  of  public  abuses;  to 
unsettle  decisions  of  the  people,  made  through  their  appropriate  organs  on  questions  of  constitu¬ 
tional  construction  and  other  subjects;  to  bring  the  Judiciary  into  public  odium  and  contempt  by 
the  employment  of  a  member  of  the  cabinet  to  write  down  in  the  newspapers  a  solemn  judgment 
of  the  Supreme  Court ;  by  sanctioning  acts  and  declarations  of  high  officers,  claiming  for  the  Ex¬ 
ecutive  the  despotic  power  of  dispensing  with  the  laws,  and  threatening  the  judges,  should  they 
have  the  temerity  to  enforce,  against  his  will,  a  law  of  the  land,  to  strike  the  process  of  their 
officer  dead  in  his  hands : — Each  of  the  foregoing  powers  being  utterly  repugnant  to  our  free  in¬ 
stitutions,  and  the  aggregate,  even  to  the  genius  of  a  limited  monarchy: 

The  purpose  of  the  Executive  to  array  one  portion  of  the  community  in  hostility  to  another, 
by  official  invocations  of  an  agrarian  and  anarchical  spirit — a  spirit  shown  by  the  experience  of 
other  countries  and  of  all  ages  to  be  not  more  perilous  in  the  outset  to  the  rights  of  property,  than, 
in  its  progress  destructive  of  personal  liberty  : 

The  tendency  of  the  foregoing  and  other  principles  and' practices,  making  up  the  present  ad¬ 
ministrative  system,  to  concentrate  in  the  person  of  the  President  all  the  powers  which  the  Con¬ 
stitution  has  distributed  among  the  Legislative,  Executive,  and  Judiciary  Departments,  and 
thus,  in  substance,  to  revolutionize  the  Government  into  an  elective  monarchy,  “surrounded’* 
in  form  only  “by  republican  institutions 

The  tendency  of  that  system,  by  enlisting  on  the  side  of  power  the  most  sordid  impulses  ; 
by  its  substitution  of  factious  interests  for  the  general  good,  and  by  its  hollow  and  fraudulent 
pretences,  to  sap  the  foundations  of  private  virtue  and  public  honor — a  tendency  exemplified  in 
its  gigantic  progeny  of  peculations  ;  in  the  shameless  apostasies  of  public  men ;  in  the  sale  al¬ 
most  in  open  market  of  political  influence  ;  and  but  lately  in  the  deception  practised  by  a  Cabin¬ 
et  Minister  on  the  carriers  of  the  mail,  by  smuggling  it  through  the  country  under  a  false  name — 
a  trick  which  has  been,  of  course,  officially,  defended  on  principle,  and  of  which  the  contriver  is 
not  the  less  honored  and  trusted  by  the  President : 

The  disastrous  effects  of  the  present  system  in  deranging  the  currency,  palsying  the  enter¬ 
prise,  withering  the  industry,  and  wasting  the  resources  of  the  country  : 

The  mutilation,  in  the  Senate,  of  a  record  which  the  Constitution  and  their  oath  of  office  had 
solemnly  commanded  its  members  to  preserve  : 

And,  lastly,  that  crowning  deed  of  party  madness — the  ejection  by  one  portion  of  the  members 
returned  to  the  House  of  Representatives  of  another  portion  of  the  members  so  returned ;  and 
the  exclusion,  consequent  thereon,  of  a  sovereign  State  of  the  American  confederacy  from  her 
constitutional  representation  in  that  House. 

5.  Resolved ,  That,  in  the  opinion  of  this  meeting,  the  American  people  are  called  on  by  the 
highest  and  the  holiest  considerations  which  can  animate  human  action  ;  by  respect  for  the  me¬ 
mory  of  their  fathers,  in  whose  blood  their  liberties  were  planted ;  by  loyalty  to  the  constitution 
of  their  country  ;  by  zeal  for  her  honor  and  regard  for  her  best  interests  ;  by  gratitude  to  a  kind 
Providence,  whose  favor  has  made  them  a  great  and  happy  nation ;  to  unite  in  rescuing  her  now 
and  forever  from  the  hands  of  the  spoilers ;  in  annihilating  that  stupendous  scheme  of  imposture 
called  “  reform,”  but  meaning  public  robbery  ;  and  in  producing  that  real  “  reform”  on  which 
rest  the  hopes  of  this,  the  last  republic — a  reform  which  can  be  effected  only  by  removing  the 
false  reformers  from  power  so  long  and  so  direfully  abused. 

6.  Resolved ,  That  in  the  nominations  recently  made  by  the  Whig  convention  at  Harrisburg, 
for  the  offices  of  President  and  Vice  President  of  the  United  States,  and  in  the  enthusiastic  re- 


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sponse  which  the  friends  of  liberty  have  made  to  those  nominations,  we  see  every  guaranty  of 
that  concert  of  action  among  the  opponents  of  the  Administration  which  will  ensure  their  tri¬ 
umphant  success. 

7.  Resolved ,  That  in  General  William  Heart  Harrison,  the  candidate  for  the  Presidency, 
we  recognise  a  patriot  whose  services  in  the  held  have  won  the  lasting  gratitude  of  his  country, 
and  the  applause  of  Legislatures,  Presidents,  and  the  most  competent  judges  of  the  military  art;, 
who,  though  his  caieer  in  arms  was  long,  perilous,  and  eventful,  “  never,”  we  learn  from  a  dis¬ 
tinguished  political  opponent,  “  sustained  a  defeat whose  civil  services,  administrative,  legis¬ 
lative,  and  diplomatic,  have  proved  his  htness  for  the  highest  office  in  the  gift  of  the  people ; 
who  has  filled  situations  surrounded  with  opportunities  by  which  a  man  in  the  smallest  degree 
less  virtuous  would  have  acquired  w'ealth,  and  yet  in  honorable  poverty  left  them  all ;  and  whose 
purity  of  heart  and  plainness  of  manners  peculiarly  adapt  him  to  the  Chief  Magistracy  of  a  re¬ 
public. 

8.  Resolved ,  That  we  hail  with  equal  gratification  the  selection  of  John  Tyler  as  the  candi¬ 
date  for  the  Vice  Presidency;  a  favorite  son  of  Virginia,  whom  that  antient  Commonwealth  has. 
delighted  to  honor;  and  who,  by  the  distinguished  ability  with  which  he  administered  her  Gov¬ 
ernment,  represented  her  sovereignty  in  the  Senate  of  the  Union,  and  discharged  numerous 
other  trusts,  as  w'eil  by  his  spotless  and  high-minded  integrity,  has  shown  himself  worthy  of  the 
exalted  station  for  which  he  has  been  named. 

9.  Resolved,  That  the  great  party  in  opposition  to  the  present  administration,  by  the  prompti¬ 
tude  and  manfulness  with  which  portions  of  them  have  surrendered  cherished  preferences  for  in¬ 
dividuals,  have  demonstrated  that  principles  not  men — the  good  of  the  country  and  not  personal 
interests — are  their  objects  ;  and  have  thereby  acquired  an  additional  title  to  public  confidence. 

10.  Resolved,  That  the  harmony  now  prevailing  among  the  opponents  of  the  administration, 
is,  in  the  opinion  of  this  meeting,  mainly  attributable  to  one  of  the  eminent  citizens  whose 
claims  were  before  the  Harrisburg  convention  ;  that,  by  at  once  and  cordially  taking  grounds  in 
support  of  the  nominations,  he  has  added  new  glory  to  the  name  of  Henry  Clay;  a  name  as¬ 
sociated  in  every  mind  with  all  that  is  mighty  in  genius,  or  devoted  in  patriotism ;  a  name  shin¬ 
ing  on  every  page  of  his  country’s  history  for  more  than  thirty  years ;  a  name  identified  in  every 
.land  with  the  cause  of  human  freedom. 

1 1.  Resolved,  That  in  the  opinion  of  this  meeting  the  former  supporters  of  the  Administration, 

who  have  withdrawn  their  confidence  from  men  whose  measures  their  judgments  had  ceased  to 
approve,  deserve  the  title  which  they  have  won  of  “  Conservatives”  of  the  constitution  and  laws 
of  the  republic  ;  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  original  opponents  of  the  Administration  to  extend  to 
the  Conservatives  the  right  hand  of  fellowship ;  and  that  a  reform  in  the  public  councils  can  be 
effected  only  by  the  zealous  and  hearty  co-operation  of  all  who  desire  a  result  so  vital  to  public  / 

liberty. 

12.  Resolved,  That,  in  order  to  aid  our  political  friends  in  the  several  States  in  giving  effect 
to  the  Harrisburg  nominations,  a  standing  committee,  consisting  of  seventy-six  citizens  of  the 
District  of  Columbia,  be  appointed,  with  authority  to  act  by  a  majority,  to  fill  any  vacancies 
which  may  occur  in  their  body,  to  make  such  rules  for  their  organization  and  action  as  they  may 
deem  necessary,  to  select  from  their  number  an  executive  committee,  by  which  shall  be  per¬ 
formed  such  duties  as  may  be  entrusted  to  them  by  the  standing  committee,  and  to  adopt  such 
other  measures  as  in  their  judgment  will  best  promote  the  objects  of  this  meeting  :  and  that  said 
standing  committee  be  entitled  “THE  REPUBLICAN  COMMITTEE  OF  SEVENTY-SIX.” 

After  reading  the  report  of  the  committee,  Mr.  Fendall,  in  a  speech  of  con¬ 
siderable  length,  addressed  the  meeting  in  support  of  the  resolutions,  and  moved 
their  adoption.  Mr.  Richard  S.  Coxe  seconded  the  motion,  and  also  addressed 
the  meeting. 

Gen.  Walter  Jones,  Wm.  L.  Brent,  and  Joseph  H.  Bradley,  Esqrs.,  after 
reiterated  calls,  successively  addressed  the  meeting. 

The  question  was  then  taken  on  the  resolutions  reported  by  the  committee,  and 
they  were  unanimously  adopted. 

Mr.  Fendall  offered  the  following  resolution,  which  was  carried: 

Resolved,  That  the  words  “  any  twenty  of  whom  shall  have  authority  to  act,”  &c.  be  sub¬ 
stituted  for  the  words  “  with  authority  to  act  by  a  majority,”  in  the  12th  resolution. 

Mr.  Jacob  Gideon,  Jr.  then  offered  the  following  resolution,  which  was  unani¬ 
mously  adopted  : 

Resolved,  That  General  Walter  Jones  be  chairman  of  the  standing  committee  ;  that  the 
president  of  this  meeting  be  a  member  thereof ;  and  that  it  be  the  duty  of  the  president  and  vice 
presidents  to  appoint  the  remaining  members  of  such  committee,  and  to  announce  the  names  of 
the  persons  composing  it,  in  the  publication  of  the  proceedings  of  this  meeting. 


5 


On  motion  of  Mr.  George  Sweeny,  it  was  unanimously 

Resolved ,  That  the  young  men  of  the  District  of  Columbia  opposed  to  the  present  Administra- 
tration  be  requested  to  organize  themselves,  and  appoint  a  standing  committee  to  co-operate  with 
the  standing  committee  appointed  by  this  meeting,  in  aiding  their  political  friends  throughout 
the  Union,  by  the  dissemination  of  useful  information,  in  their  efforts  to  promote  the  election  of 
William  Henry  Harrison  as  President,  and  John  Tyler  as  Vice  President  of  the  United 
States  ;  and  that  they  be  requested  to  depute  one  or  more  delegates  from  their  body  to  the  na¬ 
tional  convention  of  young  men,  to  be  held  in  the  city  of  Baltimore  in  May  next. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Sweeny,  it  was  unanimously 

Resolved,  That  the  thanks  of  this  meeting  are  hereby  tendered  to  the  select  committee  ap¬ 
pointed  on  the  15th  instant,  for  the  able,  forcible,  and  truly  eloquent  resolutions,  framed  and  re¬ 
ported  by  them  to,  and  adopted  by,  this  meeting ;  and,  also,  to  the  several  gentlemen  who  have 
addressed  this  meeting  ;  and  that  those  gentlemen  be  requested  to  write  out,  as  nearly  as  they 
can,  the  substance  of  their  very  eloquent  speeches  for  publication  in  the  Whig  and  Conservative 
newspapers  of  the  District. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Lewis  Carbery,  of  Georgetown  : 

Resolved,  unanimously,  That  the  thanks  of  this  meeting  are  hereby  tendered  to  the  president, 
vice  presidents,  and  secretaries,  for  the  appropriate  manner  in  which  they  have  discharged  the 
duties  imposed  on  them. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  A.  B.  Claxton  : 

Resolved,  That  the  proceedings  of  this  meeting  be  signed  by  the  President,  Vice  Presidents, 
and  Secretaries,  and  published  in  all  the  Whig  and  Conservative  newspapers  of  this  District. 

Mr.  J.  H.  Bradley  then  rose  and  said,  that  in  the  course  of  his  previous  remarks  he  had 
intimated  an  intention,  before  the  meeting  adjourned,  to  offer  a  resolution,  which,  although, 
it  did  not,  perhaps,  immediately  belong  to  the  occasion,  was,  in  some  respects,  germain  to  it. 
Among  the  efforts  which  had  been  made  by  the  Administration  party  to  defeat  the  election  of 
General  Harrison,  nothing  had  filled  him  with  more  surprise  than  the  vain  and  futile  attempt 
to  identify  the  opponents  of  the  Administration  with  the  abolitionists,  and  especially  to  number 
General  Harrison  with  them ;  and  he  proceeded  to  show  the  absurdity  of  such  a  charge.  In¬ 
dependent  of  all  political  considerations  connected  with  the  policy  of  the  General  Government,  ho 
deemed  this  a  fit  opportunity  to  bring  before  the  people  of  the  District — emphatically  the  people 
of  the  District — a  question  of  most  momentous  interest. 

The  exclusive  legislation  over  this  District,  had,  by  the  Constitution  and  the  acts  of  cession, 
been  vested  in  Congress.  But  he  protested  against  the  assumption  that  exclusive  meant  absolute 
legislation.  He  contended  that  the  Constitution  had  limited,  in  some  respects,  the  extent  of  this 
legislation,  and  that  there  were  certain  great,  inalienable  rights,  paramount  to  the  Constitution  it¬ 
self,  inherent  in  the  people,  among  which  was  the  right  of  property  ;  that  at  the  time  of  the  adop¬ 
tion  of  the  Constitution  the  territory  now  embraced  within  the  District  of  Columbia  was  a  slave¬ 
holding  territory ;  that  the  existence  of  slavery  in  it  was  recognised  in  the  Constitution,  and  the 
right  to  hold  slaves  was  guarantied  to  its  inhabitants  by  that  instrument ;  that  this  right  was  in  no¬ 
wise  diminished  or  impaired  by  the  acts  of  cession  by  which  its  inhabitants  were  placed  under  the 
exclusive  legislation  of  Congress ;  that  exclusive  legislation  meant  only  to  conclude  the  inter¬ 
ference  of  any  other  body  politic,  and  was  never  designed  to  confer  a  power  paramount  to  the 
Constitution,  under  which  alone  it  existed. 

But  he  would  not  go  into  a  discussion  of  this  subject — it  was  neither  the  time  nor  place  for 
such  discussion ;  he  had  sought  such  an  opportunity  as  this  when  thousands  of  his  fellow-citi¬ 
zens  were  assembled  to  declare  his  own  opinions  on  this  subject,  and  to  ascertain  their  will. 
That  already  the  domestic  peace  of  families  and  the  good  order  of  society  had  been  disturbed 
and  deranged  by  the  excitements  to  which  this  subject  had  given  rise ;  that  strangers  to  our 
name,  strangers  to  our  institutions,  strangers  to  our  country  and  our  capabilities  and  our  rights, 
had,  year  after  year,  assailed  and  arraigned  those  rights,  and  it  was  time  for  us  to  speak  out; 
that  the  voice  of  three  thousand  of  the  people  of  this  District  must  have  some  effect  in  re¬ 
straining  the  endeavors  of  those  people,  and  teaching  them  that  they  were  pursuing  a  wrong 
-course;  that  he  would  not  question  the  sincere  and  honest  convictions  of  those  who  were  besieging 
Congress  on  this  subject,  but  their  sympathies  were  wasted  on  a  subject  which  could  not  be 
touched  through  their  prayers,  and  they  were  producing  many  of  the  worst  evils  which  they^ 
sought  to  avert. 

Mr.  Bradley  then  offered  the  following  resolution,  which  was  unanimously  adopted  : 

Resolved,  That  by  the  acts  of  cession  of  Virginia  and  Maryland  the  tenure  of  property  within 
this  District  was  not  impaired,  and  that  all  its  muniments  received  additional  strength  and  pro¬ 
tection  from  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States ;  that  Congress  has  no  right,  under  that  Con¬ 
stitution,  to  diminish  any  of  the  safe-guards  by  which  this  tenure  is  surrounded  ;  that  under  that 
Constitution  slavery  is  recognised  in  the  territory  composing  the  District  of  Columbia,  and 


6 


Congress  cannot  interfere  with  its  existence  without  the  assent  of  the  citizens;  and  that  we  look 
upon  the  efforts  of  the  abolitionists  to  obtain  the  action  of  Congress  on  that  subject,  as  a  direct, 
violent,  and  unwarrantable  attack  on  our  rights,  and,  as  such,  do  most  solemnly  protest 
against  them. 

The  meeting  then  adjourned  at  about  104  o’clock. 

R.  C.  WEIGHTMAN,  President. 
Raphael  Semmes, 

W.  A.  Bradley, 

Wm.  L.  Brent,  y  Vice  Presidents. 

Jacob  A.  Bender, 

Benj.  Ogle  Tayloe,  J 


William  Haymax, 
Richard  Wallacii, 


Secretaries. 


* 


\ 


The  following  is  the  committee  appointed  under  the  12th  resoluion: 

REPUBLICAN  COMMITTEE  OF  SEVENTY-SIX. 


1.  Walter  Jones,  Chairman , 

2.  Thomas  Allen, 

3.  Jacob  A.  Bender, 

4.  Chas.  W.  Boteler, 

5.  Joseph  H.  Bradley, 

6.  Wm.  A.  Bradley, 

7.  Wm.  L.  Brent, 

8.  Henry  J.  Brent, 

9.  Joseph  Bryan, 

10.  Benj.  Burns, 

11.  Richard  S.  Coxe, 

12.  George  Crandell, 

13.  Harvey  Crittenden, 


39.  Henry  Addison, 

40.  Philip  T.  Berry, 

41.  Robert  J.  Brent, 

42.  Lewis  Carbery, 

43.  John  Carter, 

44.  Charles  E.  Eckell, 

45.  Wm.  Hay  man, 


58.  Harrison  Bradley, 

59.  Henry  Daingerfield, 
€0.  Benj.  T.  Fendall, 

M51.  Benj.  Hallowell, 

62.  James  Irwin, 

63.  Samuel  Isaacs, 

64.  Benj.  Kinsey, 


WASHINGTON. 

14.  Richard  Cutts, 

1 5 .  W illard  D rake, 

16.  Wm.  Easby. 

17.  P.  R.  Fendall, 

18.  Stephen  P.  Franklin, 

19.  Jacob  Gideon,  jr. 

20.  David  A.  Hall, 

21.  Joseph  Harbaugh, 

22.  Josh.  L.  Henshaw, 

23.  Seth  Hyatt, 

24.  Dr.  Wm.  Jones, 

25.  James  Marshall, 

26.  Alex.  McWilliams, 

GEORGETOWN. 

46.  Wm.  Jewell, 

47.  O.  M.  Linthicum, 

48.  Samuel  McKenney, 

49.  John  Myers, 

50.  Wm.  S.  Nicholls, 

51.  Raphael  Semmes, 

52.  Bennett  Sewell, 

ALEXANDRIA. 

65.  Cassius  F.  Lee, 

66.  John  Lloyd, 

67.  John  W.  Massie, 

68.  Samuel  Messersmith, 

69.  Robert  H.  Miller, 

70.  John  Roberts, 

71.  Thomas  Semmes, 


27.  John  Purdy, 

28.  John  G.  Robinson, 

29.  WTm.  W.  Seaton, 

30.  Samuel  Harrison  Smith,. 

31.  Thomas  Stanley, 

32.  George  Sweeny, 

33.  Benj.  Ogle  Tayloe, 

34.  Thomas  L.  Thruston, 

35.  George  Watterston, 

36.  John  F.  Webb, 

37.  Wm.  Wilson, 

38.  R.  C.  Weiglitman. 


/ 

53.  John  L.  Smith, 

54.  Walter  Smith, 

55.  Dr.  Wm.  Sothoron, 

56.  Dr.  P.  Warfield, 

57.  John  Wilson. 


72.  Stephen  Shinn, 

73.  Hugh  C.  Smith, 

74.  Edgar  Snowden, 

75.  Robert  I.  Taylor, 

76.  John  Withers. 


At  a  meeting  of  the  Republican  Committee  of  Seventy-six,  held  in  the  city 
cf  Washington,  February  25,  1840,  David  A.  Hall  was  elected  Secretary,  and 
"William  A.  Bradley,  Treasurer. 

The  following  gentlemen  were  elected  the  Executive  Committee  for  the  trans¬ 
action  of  business,  viz: 

For  Washington — Philip  R.  Fendall,  Richard  S.  Coxe,  George  Sweeny,, 
Jacob  Gideon,  Jr.,  David  A.  Hall. 

For  Georgetown — Dr.  Peregrine  Warfield. 

For  Alexandria — Robert  II.  Miller. 


7 


SPEECH  OF  Mr.  FENDALL, 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Opponents  of  the  Administration,  held  in  the  city  of  Washington ,  on 

Tuesday  evening,  February  18,  1840. 

» 

Mr.  FENDALL,  from  the  committee  appointed  to  draft  resolutions,  having  reported  the  reso¬ 
lutions  which  were  afterwards  published  in  the  National  Intelligencer  of  February  21,  addressed 
the  meeting,  in  substance,  as  follows  : 

Mr.  President  and  Fellow-citizens  :  The  resolutions  which,  by  direction  of  the  commit¬ 
tee,  I  have  had  the  honor  to  report  to  you,  are  so  full,  that  any  remarks  for  the  purpose  of  ex¬ 
position  only,  would,  perhaps,  be  unnecessary.  But  we  have  met  not  merely  to  agree  on  prin¬ 
ciples;  we  have  met  also  to  warm  our  hearts,  and  to  give  energy  to  our  action  in  support  of  our 
principles.  I  crave,  then,  the  indulgence  of  this  vast  and  respectable  assembly,  while  I  notice  a 
few  of  the  topics  embraced  in  that  report. 

The  introductory  resolutions  “  define  the  position,”  constitutional  and  historical,  of  the  citizens 
of  the  District  of  Columbia  in  the  field  of  national  politics.  That  it  is  the  right  and  the  duty  of 
any  and  every  portion  of  the  American  people  to  take  part  in  public  affairs,  is  a  general  propo¬ 
sition  too  obvious  for  either  illustration  or  denial.  It  was  asserted  as  being  peculiarly  applicable 
to  the  seat  of  the  Federal  Government,  in  those  celebrated  papers  in  defence  of  our  constitution, 
composed  by  General  Hamilton,  Mr.  Madison,  and  Mr.  Jay,  which  are  now  regarded  by  the 
whole  country  as  an  authority  inferior  to  only  the  constitution  itself.  “It  ought,”  says  the 
Federalist,  No.  84,  “  also  to  be  remembered  that  the  citizens  who  inhabit  the  country  at  and 
near  the  seat  of  Government  will,  in  all  questions  that  affect  the  general  liberty  and  prosperity, 
have  the  same  interest  with  those  who  are  at  a  distance;  and  that  they  will  stand  ready  to  sound 
the  alarm  when  necessary,  and  to  point  out  the  actors  in  any  pernicious  project.”  Obedient 
to  this  high  injunction,  we  sounded  the  alarm  nearly  nine  years  ago.  We  are  here  together 
now  to  sound  it  again. 

The  constitutional  sanction  just  cited,  though  a  decisive,  is  not  the  sole  authority  for  the  pro¬ 
posed  action  of  this  meeting.  W e  have  other  authority,  of  a  widely  different  character  indeed, 
but  not,  therefore,  the  less  suited  to  our  circumstances.  We  have  anti  constitutional,  as  well  as 
constitutional  authority.  We  have  the  authority  of  the  present  Administration.  You  remem¬ 
ber,  fellow-citizens,  that  the  inauguration  of  President  Van  Buren  was  greeted  in  this  city  by  an 
official  festival.  Among  the  intended  guests  was  the  honorable  Levi  Woodbury,  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury;  but  circumstances  preventing  his  presence,  he  transmitted  to  the  company  a  “sen¬ 
timent,”  which  was  afterwards  published  in  the  official  journal  of  the  Government — the  same 
*  paper  which  publishes  the  laws  of  the  United  States.  This  “  sentiment”  was  as  follows: 

“  The  Democracy  of  Washington  city” — [and  the  Democracy  of  Washington  city  is  here,  in 
“  this  hall,]  the  immediate  sentinels  over  the  administration  of  the  General  Government. 
“  Though  destitute  of  political  power,  they  are  able,  beyond  all  others,  by  their  intellectual  and 
“  moral  power,  to  exert  the  most  salutary  influence  on  the  whole  Union.” 

Disclaiming,  on  your  behalf,  so  much  of  the  complimental  part  of  this  opinion  as  modesty 
might  forbid  you  to  appropriate,  I  agree  with  its  author,  that  your  opportunities  are  particularly 
good  for  observing  the  conduct  of  the  Executive.  The  result  of  your  observations — what  the 
“  sentinels”  have  spied  out — appears,  should  you  approve  it,  in  the  report  just  read.  The 
‘‘sentinels”  have  not  slept:  a  good  share  of  their  vigilance  has  been  bestowed  on  the  sentiment¬ 
al  Secretary  himself:  and  their  report  may  possibly,  as  he  observes,  “  exert  the  most  salutary 
influence  on  the  whole  Union.” 

From  a  distinguished  confederate  of  the  Secretary,  we  derive  further  authority,  of  the  same 
description,  for  seeking  to  exert  the  influence  just  referred  to.  In  a  document,  originating  a 
claim  on  behalf  of  federal  officers,  and  defending  the  claim  on  principles  of  democracy  and  good 
morals,  to  bring  “  the  patronage  of  the  Federal  Government  into  conflict  with  the  freedom  of 
elections,”  a  Senator  of  the  United  States  announced  that  “  a  very  great  majority”  of  one  class 
of  persons  residing  in  this  District  were  opponents  of  the  present  Administration.  The  aver¬ 
ment,  whether  correct  or  not  in  regard  to  the  designated  class,  would  be  true,  beyond  contro¬ 
versy,  if  applied  to  the  classes  taken  in  the  aggregrate.  An  immense  majority  of  the  people  of 
the  District  of  Columbia  are  opponents  of  the  present  Administration.  They  see  it  too  closely 
to  be  otherwise.  Now,  the  right  of  a  majority,  whatever  may  be  their  political  weakness,  to  pro¬ 
claim  their  opinions  on  any  subject,  has  never  been  denied,  in  this  country  at  least,  even  in  the 
most  angry  times.  It  has  not  been  denied  either  by  the  old  Federal  party,  or  by  the  new 
Democratic  party.  And  this  the  honorable  Senator  may  be  presumed  to  know,  he  having  been 
deep  in  the  councils  of  both  those  parties. 

Until  the  era  of  misnamed  “  reform ”  approached,  the  people  of  this  District  did  not  feel  them¬ 
selves  called  on  to  express  their  collective  opinions  on  public  affairs.  They  had  differed  widely 
and  warmly  among  themselves  on  the  questions  which  divided  their  fellow-citizens  “  at  a  distance 
from  the  seat  of  Government;”  they  had  seen  political  power  pass  from  one  great  party  into  the 
hands  of  another ;  some  of  them  approved,  others  regretted,  all  acquiesced  in  the  change.  The 


» 


8 


struggle  of  these  parties  was  felt  to  be  a  struggle  for  principle;  and  no  grave  distrust  existed  as 
to  the  patriotism  of  either  of  them,  however  acrimonious  might  be  the  tone,  occasionally,  of  party 
language.  But  at  length  an  existing  Administration  was  assailed,  on  grounds  so  personal  and 
factious  in  their  character,  as  to  give  warning  of  the  publicevils  which  must  follow  from  its  defeat. 
In  1 828  the  citizens  of  the  national  metropolis — not  the  office-holders — met,  and  gave  their  tes¬ 
timony,  as  eye  witnesses,  in  behalf  of  that  Administration.  This  wras  a  preparatory  note  of 
“  alarm. ”  It  was  unheeded.  A  new  administrative  system — a  system  of  terror  and  corruption, 
was  fastened  on  the  country.  In  1831  you  met  again;  sounded  anew  “  alarm,”  and  “pointed 
out  the  actors”  in  the  “  pernicious  projects”  which,  you  raw,  threatened  ruin  to  the  constitution, 
the  liberties,  and  the  morals  of  the  country.  You  saw  that  the  peril  was  fearfully  increased  by 
the  popularity  of  the  chief  “  actor a  popularity  which  was  the  overflow  of  national  gratitude 
to  eminent  services  in  the  field.  Of  this  popularity  his  partisans  boasted,  that  it  was  “  able  to 
stand  any  thing.”  If  blind  idolaters  or  venal  eulogists  could  be  believed,  the  American  people 
were  ready  to  admit  that  the  heroes,  the  patriots,  and  the  sages  of  all  time,  even  Washington: 
himself,  wrere  but  as  dust  in  the  balance  when  weighed  against  Jackson — Andrew  Jackson  ;  him 

“  Who  veil’d 

Earth  with  his  haughty  shadow,  and  displayed, 

Until  the  o’er  canopied  horizon  fail’d, 

His  lushing  wings ;  oh !  he  who  was  almighty  hail’d !” 

The  report  declares  that  President  Jackson’s  system  has  been  “  adopted,  acted  on,  and  extend¬ 
ed,”  by  his  successor.  While  a  favored  subordinate  of  his  “  venerated  chief,”  Mr.  Van  Buren, 
proclaimed  across  the  Atlantic,  that  “  to  have  served  under  such  a  chief,  at  such  a  time,  and  to 
have  won  his  confidence  and  esteem,  [was]  a  sufficient  glory.”  In  a  remarkable  paper  accepting 
the  nomination  of  himself  to  the  Presidency,  which  the  “chief”  had  made,  and  the  “republican 
delegates,”  as  they  then  styled  themselves,  had  confirmed,  he  said: 

“I  consider  myself  the  honored  instrument ,  selected  by  the  friends  of  the  present  Adminis¬ 
tration,  to  carry  out  its  principles  and  policy ;  and  that,  as  well  from  inclination  as  from 
“  duty,  I  shall,  if  honored  with  the  choice  of  the  American  people,  endeavor  to  tread  generally 
“  in  the  footsteps  of  President  Jackson — happy  if  I  shall  he  able  to  perfect  the  work  which  he 
“  has  so  gloriously  begun.” 

Thus  deeply  pledged,  having,  by  the  unstinted  aid  of  Executive  patronage,  affected  his  elec¬ 
tion,  he  intimated,  in  his  inaugural  address  as  President  of  the  United  States,  a  hope  that,  by 
enforcing  the  system,  he  might  acquire  the  popularity  of  his  “  illustrious  predecessor.”  Faith¬ 
ful  has  he  been  to  his  pledges;  and  strictly  has  he  enforced  that  system.  He  has  even  “improv¬ 
ed”  it;  but  on  the  same  principles  which  he  had  before  applied,  to  improving  the  newspaper 
press.  In  his  “  endeavors  to  tread  generally  in  the  footsteps,”  &c.  he  has  trod  and  trampled 
under  foot  public  liberty.  Again,  therefore,  is  it  necessary  for  the  watchmen  on  the  tower  “  to 
sound  the  alarm.” 

Among  the  means  for  executing  “  pernicious  projects,”  we  have  not  now  to  fear  the  overgrown 
popularity  of  the  principal  “  actor.”  Mr.  Van  Buren’s  popularity  !  What  and  where  is  it! 
It  is  not  military,  surely,  though  he  is  technically  a  “  commander-in-chief;”  though  he  has  just 
boasted  to  Congress  that  he  reviewed  the  troops  at  Trenton  ;  and  though,  on  the  strength  of  that 
achievement,  he  asks  to  be  put  at  the  head  of  a  standing  army  of  two  hundred  thousand  men. 
It  is  not  political;  for  with  what  single,  prominent,  salutary  measure  of  public  policy,  long  as 
he  has  been  in  public  life,  is  he  identified?  With  none.  It  is  not  personal;  for  his  habits, 
manners,  and  whole  appearance  act  like  the  torpedo’s  touch  on  popular  sympathy.  Though 
“  all  things  to  all  men,”  (in  a  very  different  sense,  however,  from  the  original  meaning  of  the 
phrase,)  he  is,  so  far  as  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  are  concerned,  nothing  to  any  man.  From 
his  cold,  callous,  and  artificial  demeanor,  a  plain  republican  instinctively  resiles.  And  then, 
that  smile ,  that  fatal  smile  ! — that  sort  of  smile  which,  in  by-gone  days,  made  a  celebrated  writer 
“feel  an  involuntary  emotion  to  guard  himself  against  mischief,”  and  of  which  the  same  writer 
said,  “the  insidious  smile  upon  the  cheek  would  warn  him  of  the  canker  at  the  heart.” 

No,  fellow-citizens,  though  his  practices  in  the  black  art,  or  his  art  of  black  practices,  have 
gained  for  the  “  honored  instrument”  the  title  of  “  magician,”  there  is  no  magic  in  the  name  of 
Martin  Van  Buren.  He  has  no  popularity  of  any  kind;  and  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  he  ever  should  have  any  with  a  people  like  the  Americans,  at  once  frank  and  sagacious, 
generous  and  shrewd.  But  is  he  on  this  account  the  less  formidable  ?  Far  otherwise.  He  is 
the  subtle  Octavius,  cementing,  consolidating,  and  stealthily  enlarging  the  power  which  the 
bolder  spirit  of  the  first  Cresar  had  usurped.  Conscious  weakness  teaches  him  a  dangerous  pru¬ 
dence.  It  admonishes  him  to  rely  mainly  on  the  resources  of  his  native  cunning;  and  all  history 
tells  us  that  cunning  is  more  dangerous  than  force.  Never  v’as  the  despotism  of  the  Roman 
emperors  sterner  or  more  degrading  than  when  wielded  by  the  timid  eunuchs  of  the  palace. 

With  your  permission,  fellow-citizens,  I  will  now  take  up  the  report  of  the  committee,  and 
notice,  with  more  particularity  than  could  be  allowed  in  that  paper,  consistently  with  its  plan, 
some  of  the  causes  of  “  alarm”  which  it  refers  to.  The  first  is  the  inordinate  increase  of  the 


4 


I 


9 

Public  Expenditures. 

The  following  is  a  statement  of  the  expenses  of  the  Government,  omitting  fractions  ami  pay¬ 
ments  on  account  of  the  Ghent  treaty  and  of  the  national  debt,  for  each  of  the  last  fifteen  years  : 

1825  - 

1826  - 

1827  - 

1828  - 


Mr.  Adams’s  administration  - 
Average  for  each  year,  $12,575,477. 
1829  - 
1'830  - 

1831  - 

1832  - 

1833  - 

1834  - 

1835  - 

1836  - 


Gen.  Jac  kson’s  administration 
Average  for  each  year,  $18,224,092. 

1837  - 

1838  - 

1839  - 


Mr.  Van  Buren’s  first  three  years 
Average  for  each  year,  $37,135,651. 

You  all  remember  that,  in  the  war  of  the  Reformers  against  President  Adams,  one  of  their 
grounds  of  attack  was  the  imputed  extravagance  of  his  Administration;  and  most  of  you  know 
that  the  imputation  was  unjust.  The  statement  now  read  shows  that,  under  the  cheers  of  “re¬ 
trenchment  and  reform,”  the  public  expenses  from  1831  to  1838  bounded  with  greyhound  leaps, 
till,  for  the  last  named  year,  they  reached  the  amazing  sum  of  forty  millions,  and  largely  up¬ 
wards,  of  dollars  !  an  amount  greatly  exceeding  that  for  any  three  years  of  Mr.  Adams. 

In  1839  no  appropriations  were  made  for  the  Cumberland  road,  nor  for  harbors;  which  ex- 
'  plains  the  diminution  for  that  year.  What  is  to  become  of  the  present  year  we  know  not  yet ; 
the  “  information  of  the  state  of  the  Union,”  which  the  President  has  given  “from  time  to 
time”  during  the  present  session  of  Congress,  being,  as  it  regards  the  finances,  a  puzzle.  In 
^  his  annual  message,  transmitted  to  Congress  December  24,  1839,  he  says  that  if  the  payments 

due  to  the  Treasury  from  banks  “  during  the  next  year  shall  be  punctually  made,  and  if  Con- 
e  gress  shall  keep  the  appropriations  within  the  estimates,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
4  all  the  outstanding  Treasury  notes  can  be  redeemed,  and  the  ordinary  expenses  defrayed, 
(  without  imposing  on  the  People  any  additional  burden,  either  of  loans  or  of  increased  taxes.” 
He  then  deprecates  a  public  debt,  “  new  loans,”  &c.  It  would  seem,  however,  that  instead 
of  there  being  “every  reason,”  there  was  no  reason,  for  the  President’s  credulity;  for,  on  the 
4th  of  February,  six  weeks  after  the  annual  message,  he  sends  to  Congress  another  message, 
asking  for  44 means”  to  meet  “any  deficiencies  in  the  revenue ,  from  whatever  cause  they  may 
arise.”  In  less  than  a  fortnight,  (February  17th,)  there  is  a  third  message,  accompanied  by  a 
report  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Treastiary,  and  renewing  the  application.  The  Secretary’s 
report  admits  “the  fact  that  the  greatest  debts  due  from  the  banks  roere  not  payable  till  the  last 
4  half  of  the  year  ”  and  when  the  annual  message  was  transmitted,  Congress  had  appropriated 
no  money  except  for  the  pay  of  its  members.  So  that  neither  of  the  contingencies  had  happened 
which  that  document  indicated  as  the  only  imaginable  source  of  fiscal  deficiency.  The  44  means” 
solicited  were,  of  course,  understood  to  be  a  “new  loan,”  in  the  shape  of  an  enormous  issue  of 
Treasury  notes.  And  on  this  head  I  would  remind  you  that  in  1838,  when  the  Administration 
was  borrowing  largely  in  this  wav,  there  were,  according  to  a  published  statement  made  up 
fronj  official  documents,  nearly  fifteen  millions  of  dollars  of  public  money  unaccounted  for  in  the 
hands  of  its  agents. 

That  the  expenses  of  Government  must  increase  with  increasing  business  and  population 
in  the  country,  is  readily  admitted  ;  but  it  is  denied  that  any  legitimate  cause  has  existed  for 
their  increase  at  the  galloping  rate — I  had  almost  said,  in  the  geometrical  progression — shown 
in  the  table  which  I  read.  Other  and  very  different  causes  must  explain  this  result.  The  re¬ 
port  before  you  tells  what  they  are. 

The  next  topic  of  the  resolutions,  is 

The  Sub -Treasury. 

This  44 pernicious  project,”  of  late  called  by  its  advocates  an  “Independent  Treasury,”  and, 
in  the  last  annual  message,  an  44  Independent  National  Treasury,”  was,  when  first  proposed  in 


$11,490,459 

13,062,316 

12,653,095 

13,296,041 


$50,501,911 

$12,660,460 

13,229,533 

13,864,067 

16,516,388 

22,713,756 

18,425,417 

17,514,950 

30,868,164 


$145,792,735 

$39,164,745 

40,427,218 

31,815,000 


$111,406,953 


10 


Congress,  voted  down  by  the  whole  Administration  party.  President  Jackson,  in  his  annual 
message  of  December,  1835,  urges  “that,  in  the  regulations  which  Congres  may  prescribe  re- 
“  specting  the  custody  of  the  public  moneys,  it  is  desirable  that  as  little  discretion  as  may  be 
“  deemed  consistent  with  their  safe-keeping  should  be  given  to  the  Executive  agents.” 

And  in  his  message  of  December  6,  1836,  he  says  : 

“To  retain  it  [the  public  money]  in  the  Treasury  unemployed  in  any  way  is  impracticable' 

“  It  is,  besides,  against  the  genius  of  our  free  institutions  to  lock  up  in  vaults  the  treasure  of 
“  the  nation.  To  take  from,  the  people  the  right  of  bearing  arms,  and.  put  their  weapons  of 
“  defence  in  the  hands  of  a  standing  army,  would  be  scarcely  more  dangerous  to  their  liberties 
“  than  to  permit  the  Government  to  accumulate  immense  amounts  of  treasure  beyond  the  sup- 
“  plies  necessary  to  its  legitimate  wants,  i>uch  a  treasure  would  doubtless  be  employed  at  some 
“  time,  as  it  has  been  in  other  countries,  where  opportunity  tempted  ambition.” 

The  project  was  denounced  by  the  leading  official  journals  as  “dangerous  to  a  republic” — as 
“  disorganizing  and  revolutionary” — as  having  the  effect  “to  bring  the  public  Treasury  much 
“  nearer  the  actual  custody  and  control  of  the  President  than  it  is  now,  and  expose  it  to  be 
“  plundered  by  a  hundred  hands  where  one  cannot  now  reach  it” — as  giving  rise  to  “  a  pat- 
“  ronage  of  the  most  dangerous  influence” — and  “  as  a  fruitful  source  of  mischief  in  making 
“  Government  officers  the  keepers  of  the  cash.”  “  Place,”  said  the  authority  just  cited,  “about 
“  them  what  guards  you  may,  in  the  shape  of  commissioners,  inspectors,  or  whatever  else, 
“  peculation  will  be  endless.  There  is  no  security  in  it,  and  it  will  involve  heavy  and  unne- 
“  cessary  expense.  The  chief  and  overruling  objection,  however,  is,  the  endless  source  of  pat- 
“  ronage  to  which  it  would  give  rise.  Make  the  machinery  as  simple  as  you  may,  and  open  to 
“  view,  wherever  money  is  temptation  will  creep  in,  and  corruption  in  every  form  follow  at  its 
“  heels.” 

Soon,  however,  as  you  are  aware,  “a  change  came  o’er  the  spirit  of  the  dream,”  and  a  sub- 
Treasury  is  now,  as  it  has  been  from  the  time  of  Mr.  Van  Buren’s  accession  to  the  Presidency, 
the  cardinal  measure  of  Executive  policy.  In  his  last  annual  message  he  cites  in  its  support 
“  the  experience  of  other  nations.”  “From  the  results,”  he  says,  “of  inquiries  made  by  the 
“  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  in  regard  to  the  practice  among  them,  I  am  enabled  to  state  that 
“  in  twenty-two  out  of  twenty-seven  foreign  Governments,  from  which  undoubted  information 
“  has  been  obtained,  the  public  moneys  are  kept  in  charge  of  public  officers.”  And  what  are 
these  “  foreign  Governments”  whose  example  the  Chief  Magistrate  of  a  free  people  holds  up  as 
a  model  for  their  imitation  ?  Let  us  listen  to  the  voice,  almost  from  the  grave,  of  a  patriot  who, 
during  the  last  war,  stood  fast  for  his  country,  though  by  means  of  the  war  he  lost  a  princely 
fortune,  and  was  reduced  to  poverty.  Yes,  this  venerable  man,  Moses  Carletqn,  of  Maine, 
now  earns  his  daily  bread  by  the  labor  of  his  withered  hands.  Deceived  by  the  Reformers,  he 
gave  to  them  his  confidence  and  support.  But  when  he  found  that  their  professions  were  all 
false  and  hollow,  that  their  schemes,  like  the  fabled  fruit,  though  tempting  to  the  eye  became 
bitter  ashes  in  the  mouth,  he  nobty  burst  the  ties  of  party,  and  denounced  his  deceivers.  But 
yesterday  he  published  his  solemn  protest  against  “  the  daring  and  reckless  attempt  to  force  on 
“  the  people  of  this  country  an  office-holders’  bank,  under  the  specious  title  of  an  Independ- 
“  ent  Treasury.”  He  adds  :  “  This  office-holders’  bank  will,  indeed,  make  the  Treasury 
“  ‘Independent’  of  the  people,  because  it  places  the  Treasury  beyond  the  reach  of  the  people.” 
After  reproving,  with  the  fervid  eloquence  of  his  earlier  days,  the  “hardihood”  of  the  President 
in  quoting  the  precedents  of  Governments  “grasping  the  purse-strings  of  a  people  groaning 
“under  the  burdens  of  their  task-masters,”  he  indignantly  exclaims:  “If  the  analogy  were 
“  carried  out,  by  the  same  reasoning,  it  would  follow  that,  because  twenty-two  out  of  twenty  - 
“  seven  foreign  countries  have  a  Kintg,  we  must  have  one  too.” 

And  whither  has  the  President  taken  us  to  see  precedents  for  his  exclusively  metallic,  hard- 
money,  anti-credit,  purse-and-sword  system?  To  France — the  France  of  Napoleon  and  the 
Bourbons ;  to  decrepit  Spain,  and  her  dependency,  the  island  of  Cuba  ;  to  oppressed  Italy ;  to 
sterile  Sweden  ;  to  Austria  and  Prussia,  two  of  the  “Holy  Allies;”  even  to  Turkey  in  Asia; 
to  the  very  equator ;  to  nooks  and  crannies  hardly  discoverable  on  the  map  of  the  world.  The 
only  two  countries  on  his  list  whose  circumstances  resemble  our  own,  are  authorities,  in  many 
essential  respects,  against  him,  even  in  the  case  as  stated  by  himself:  Holland,  that  land  which 
the  spirit  of  liberty  and  of  commerce  won  from  the  waters;  and  England,  from  whom  our  lan¬ 
guage,  institutions,  habits,  and  manners  are  derived.  England  !  Every  line  of  her  glorious  an¬ 
nals  points  the  finger  of  scorn  at  his  crude  conceptions.  Let  us  now  turn  to  a  single  page.  In 
the  year  1780,  Edmund  Burke  introduced  into  the  House  of  Commons  his  celebrated  plan  of 
economical  reform,  and  arranged  it  into  several  “fundamental  rules.”  One  of  them  was,  “that 
“  all  subordinate  treasuries,  as  the  nurseries  of  mismanagement,  and  as  naturally 
“  drawing  to  themselves  as  much  money  as  they  can,  keeping  it  as  long  as  they  can ,  and  ac- 
“  counting  for  it  as  late  as  they  can,  ought  to  be  dissolved.”  Had  Mr.  Burke  lived  to  our  day, 
he  would  have  added  to  this  enumeration,  “  and  running  away  with  it  as  fast  and  as  far  as 
“  they  can.”  Establishments  which  that  great  man  labored,  sixty  years  ago,  to  put  down  as 


11 


being  among  the  crying  nuisances  of  a  monarchy,  the  Chief  Magistrate  of  a  republic  is  now 
striving,  at  every  hazard,  to  create,  and  to  force  upon  his  countrymen. 

The  latest  defence  of  this  “pernicious  project”  is,  that  it  will  decrease  the  price  of  labor.  And 
»  this  is  the  plea  by  which  the  self-styled  “  Democratic  party”  seeks  the  favor  of  the  working¬ 
man  !  He  is  asked  to  lend  a  hand  to  keep  them  in  power,  to  steady  their  tottering  seats,  be¬ 
cause  his  wages  are  to  be  lessened,  and  the  gains  of  the  overgrown  capitalist,  whom  but  yester¬ 
day  they  denounced  as  an  imp  of  Satan,  are  to  be  proportionally  swelled  !  This  would  un¬ 
doubtedly  be  the  operation  of  the  scheme.  But  it  was  never  intended  to  say  so  “by  authority. 
There  was  a  leak  in  one  of  the  smaller  vessels.  But  the  story,  once  told,  could  not  be  recalled, 
and  all  that  could  be  done  was  to  make  the  best  of  it.  And  so  they  set  some  of  the  veterans 
among  the  “enlisted  soldiers  of  the  Administration,”  as  Mr.  Senator  Buchanan  would  say,  to 
proving  that  the  prices  of  every  thing  else  would  fall  with  the  price  of  wages,  and  that,  therefore, 
as  the  laborer,  though  he  would  receive  less,  would  pay  out  less,  he  would  be  no  worse  off 
under  the  sub-Treasury  than  he  is  now.  Rather  an  extraordinary  argument,  by  the  wray,  for  a 
revolution  in  the  business  of  the  country,  that  it  will  make  matters  no  worse  than  it  finds  them. 
But  even  this  argument  is  fallacious.  The  Government  may  reduce  the  price  of  wages,  but 
how  can  it  affect  the  prices  of  the  articles  which  are  imported  from  foreign  countries,  and  which 
the  laborer  must  pay  for  out  of  his  wages,  or  do  without  them?  Of  tea  and  coffee,  for  example'? 
And  do  without  them  he  must,  if  we  are  to  credit  “  the  experience  of  other  nations,”'  which  has 
so  fascinated  the  President. 

Fellow-citizens,  every  individual  here  present  is  bound  by  his  duty,  as  an  American  citizen, 
to  ascertain,  if  he  can,  the  truth,  and  the  whole  truth,  about  this  sub-Treasury  plot.  But  a 
very  considerable  portion  of  you  I  know  to  be  personally  interested  in  getting  a  clear  view  of 
the  particular  feature  of  it  on  which  I  am  now  remarking.  I  take  leave  to  refer  such  citizens  to 
the  masterly  speech  of  Senator  Davis,  published  in  the  National  Intelligencer  of  the  10th  of  this 
month,  and  especially  to  a  statement  appended  to  that  speech.  The  statement  show's  what 
wages  the  laboring  man  receives  in  some  of  the  President’s  “  twenty-two  foreign  Governments.  ” 
I  have  it  at  hand,  and  regret  that  we  are  so  pressed  for  time  that  I  cannot  read  it  to  you. 

[The  reading  of  the  statement  was  called  for.] 

Well,  gentlemen,  here  it  is  : 

“  Wages  in  France. — Calais,  common  laborers,  7^d.  per  day,  with  board  and  without  dwell - 
“  ing  ;  Boulogne,  5d.  per  day  do.  do.  ;  Nantes,  8d.  per  day  without  hoard  and  without  dwell - 
“  ing ;  Marseilles,  4d.  to  7d.  per  day,  with  board  and  without  dwelling.  The  food  in  some 
“  districts  ‘  consists  of  rye  bread ,  soup  made  of  millet,  cakes  made  of  Indian  corn,  now  and  then 
*  “some  salt  provisions  and  vegetables  ;  rarely,  if  ever,  butcher’s  meat.’  In  others,  ‘  wheaten 
“  bread,  soup  made  with  vegetables,  and  a  little  grease  or  lard  twice  a  day ,  potatoes  or  other 
“  vegetables,  but  seldom  butcher’s  meat.’  ” 

“  Sweden. — The  daily  wages  of  a  skilled  agriculturist  are  7d.  or  8d  ;  while  the  unskilled  ob- 
“tain  no  more  than  3d.  or  4d.  and  board  themselves.  Agriculturists  in  the  Southern  provinces 
“live  upon  salt  fish  and  potatoes  ;  in  the  Northern  provinces,  porridge  and  rye  bread  form 
“their  food.” 

“  Bavaria. — Laborers  are  paid  at  the  rate  of  8d.  per  day  in  the  country,  without  board.” 

“  Belgium. — A  skilled  artisan  may  earn  in  summer  Is.  2d.  to  Is.  5d.  ;  in  winter,  from  lOd. 
“to  Is.  2d.  ;  unskilled,  half  as  much,  without  board — live  upon  rye  bread,  potatoes,  and  milk. 
“  Agricultural  laborers  have  less.” 

“  Germany. — Dantzig  laborers,  4|d.  to  7d.  per  day,  without  board  ;  Mecklenburg,  7d.  per  day 
“do.;  Holstein,  7d.  per  day,  without  board.” 

“  Netherlands. — South  Holland  laborers,  3d.  to  4d.  per  day,  with  board;  North  Holland,, 
“  20d.  per  day,  without  board;  Antwerp,  5d.  per  day,  do.  ;  West  Flanders,  96s.  to  104s.  per 
“year,  with  board.” 

“  Italy. — Trieste  laborers,  12d.  per  day,  without  board;  do.  6d.  per  day,  with  board;  Is- 
“  tria,  8d.  to  lOd.  per  day,  without  board;  do.,  4d,  to  5d.  per  day  with  board;  Lombardy,  4. 
“to  8d.  per  day,  do.  ;  Genoa,  5d.  to  8d.  per  day,  do.,  without  lodgings;  Tuscany,  6d.  per 
“  day,  without  either .” 

“  Saxony. — In  1837,  a  man  employed  on  his  own  loom,  working  very  diligently  from  Mon- 
“  day  morning  to  Saturday  night,  from  5  o'clock  in  the  morning  until  dusk,  and  even  at 
“  times  with  a  lamp,  his  wfe  assisting  him  in  finishing,  and  taking  him  the  work,  could  not 
‘ ‘ possibly  earn  more  than  20  groschen  [about  60  cents]  per  week.  Nor  could  one  who  had 
“  three  children,  aged  12  years  and  upwards,  all  working  at  the  loom  as  well  as  himself,  with  his 
‘ ‘  wife,  employed  doing  up  the  work,  earn  in  the  whole  more  than  §1  weekly.” 

Such  is  the  state  of  things  in  the  President’s  sub-Treasury  hard-money  countries ;  or,  as  Jer¬ 
emy  Bentham  would  have  called  them,  no-money,  nothin g-to-eat,  nothing-to-wear,  and  worked- 
to-death  countries  ;  countries  wdiere  he  who  is  born  a  laborer  is  apt  to  die  one.  And  the  same 
state  of  things  the  President  desires  to  force  on  our  own  free  and  happy  country,  where,  under  the 
blessed  influence  of  the  system  we  have  been  used  to,  the  laborer  may  so  improve  his  faculties  as 


i. 


12 


to  deserve  and  to  receive  the  highest  honors  of  the  Republic.  Look  at  England,  where  a  similar 
system  prevails,  and  see,  as  you  have  seen,  a  coal-digger  become  the  highest  judicial  officer  of 
the  nation  !  Several  striking  instances  of  this  sort,  among  our  own  countrymen,  will  readily 
occur  to  your  minds. 

The  people  of  the  United  States  need  no  examples  from  the  “  experience  of  other  nations”  to 
instruct  them  about  sub-Treasuries.  There  are  a  few — no,  a  good  many — volumes  belonging  to 
the  political  literature  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  which  give  sufficient  inlormation  on  the 
subject.  These  volumes  are  a  series  of  Congressional  reports  and  Executive  epistles,  containing 
the  memoirs  of  sub-Treasurers,  otherwise  called  Independent  Treasurers,  otherwise  called  In¬ 
dependent  National  Treasurers,  otherwise  called  defaulters.  In  one  of  these  works — the  report 
of  the  select  committee  of  investigation,  made  February  27,  1839,  on  the  defalcation  of  SamueL 
Swartwout,  Collector  at  New  York,  and  others — you  will  find  it  proved  by  sworn  witnesses 
that  a  prominent  cause  of  Swartwout’s  defalcation,  and  of  its  long  concealment,  was  “the 
discontinuance  of  the  use  of  banks  as  depositories  “of  the  public  moneys,  and  permitting  the 
same  to  accumulate  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Swartwout.”  While  the  money  was  deposited  in. 
banks,  certificates  from  them  accompanied  his  weekly  returns,  as  vouchers  of  the  transfer,  and. 
that  the  money  reported  to  be  on  hand  was  so  in  fact.  But  the  discontinuance  of  banks  re¬ 
moved  this  check  on  the  Collector.  The  ultimate  default  of  this  sub-Tieasurer  alone  was  oxe 

MILLION  TWO  HUNDRED  AND  TWENTY-FIVE  THOUSAND  SEVEN  HUNDRED  AND  FIVE  DOLLARS 
AND  SIXTY-NINE  CENTS. 

And  here  fellow-citizens,  a  passing  word  concerning  banks  ;  a  subject  on  which  almost  every 
variety  of  opinion  exists  throughout  our  country,  and  perhaps  in  this  hall.  While  some  are 
against  the  banking  system  altogether,  others  are  in  favor  of  it,  with  the  balance-wheel  of  a  na¬ 
tional  bank ;  others  again  regard  such  an  institution  as  the  worst  part  of  the  system  ;  and  a  yet 
larger  portion  of  our  fellow-citizens  think  that  the  system  needs  reform,  and  that,  if  reformed,  it 
would  be  salutary.  But  entire  unanimity  must  exist  on  one  point;  and  that  is,  that  any  thing 
which  the  Administration  has  said,  or  can  say  against  banks  or  the  credit  system  is,  as  mere  au¬ 
thority,  not  entitled  to  a  moment’s  attention.  From  the  time,  in  1829,  when  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States  declined  to  remove  the  President  of  the  branch  at  Portsmouth,  on  the  Cabinet  ac¬ 
cusation  of  his  being  “  a  particular  friend  of  Mr.  Webster,”  and  thus  resisted  the  first  attempt 
to  make  the  institution  a  tool  for  subjecting  the  public  money  to  Executive  control ;  from  that 
moment  to  the  present,  the  course  of  the  Administration  about  banks  has  been  a  series  of  incon¬ 
sistencies  and  tergiversations,  almost  too  laughable  for  grave  rebuke,  and  yet  too  serious  for  levi- 
ity.  One  contradiction  has  been  only  the  “  premonitory  symptom”  of  another. 

What !  shall  an  Administration  which  lives  on  borrowing ;  which,  but  for  its  promises  to  pay, 
would  be  at  its  last  gasp  ;  whose  mortal  agony  is  protracted  only  by  its  Treasury  notes,  those  mus¬ 
tard  plasters  applied  to  the  feet  of  a  dying  patient ;  shall  an  Administration  so  circumstanced  be 
yelping,  whenever  it  can  get  breath  enough,  “Down  with  the  banks!”  “perish  credit!”  and. 
will  grown  persons  listen  to  the  cry  I  A  set  of  mischievous  politicians  produce  a  pressure  under 
which  the  nation  groans,  and  then  say  “no  honest  man  ought  to  regret”  it ;  poor  logic,  by  the 
way,  to  show  why  they  do  not  regret  it  themselves.  They  stimulate  the  banks  to  extend  their 
loans,  and  then  exclaim,  “Everyman  who  trades  on  borrowed  capital  ought  to  break;”  thus 
adding  another  to  the  thousand  and  one  reasons  why  they  ought  themselves  to  be  broken.  One 
President  assures  Congress  that  “experience  continues  to  realize  the  expectations  entertained  as 
to  the  capacity  of  the  State  banks  to  perform  the  duties  of  fiscal  agents  for  the  Government;” 
and  wre  next  hear  him  howling  in  the  Western  forests  about  “their  base  treachery  and  perfidy.” 
His  successor,  in  his  message  of  September  4,  1S37,  to  Congress  at  its  special  session,  (a  ses¬ 
sion  for  which  the  proclamation  issued  on  the  15th  of  May,  just  eleven  days  after  he  had  refused 
to  call  it,  because  he  “did  not  see,  at  present,  sufficient  reasons  to  justify  [him]  in  requiring  an 
earlier  meeting  than  that  appointed  by  the  constitution,”)  urged  “the  propriety  and  importance 
of  a  uniform  law  concerning  bankruptcies  of  corporations  and  other  bankers.”  This  recom¬ 
mendation  proceeded  from  a  Chief  Magistrate  who,  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  had  de¬ 
nounced  a  bankrupt  law  affecting  banks  as  an  invasion  of  State  rights ” — who  had  said  “his 
idea  of  a  bankrupt  system  was,  that  it  could  not  be  applied  to  any  but  individuals  or  principals, 
and  that  it  was  not  capable  of  being  made  to  operate  on  associations  or  on  the  subordinate 
agents  either  of  individuals  or  corporations.”  The  “  illustrious  predecessor”  had  almost,  in  so 
many  words,  told  Congress  that  his  objections  to  banks  wrere  confined  to  banks  for  the  People  ; 
that  he  was  in  favor  of  a  Government  bank  ;  that  had  his  permission  been  solicited,  they  might 
have  created  such  an  institution  ;  and  that  he  wrould  even  have  draughted  the  bill  for  it,  being  a 
doctor  of  laws.  The  “honored  instrument,”  eager  “to  carry  out”  this  policy,  insisted,  in  his 
message  of  December  4,  1838,  that  he  “  should  be  at  liberty”  to  use  banks  or  not  at  his  dis¬ 
cretion  ;  in  other  words,  that  though  banks  under  legislative  control  were  great  evils,  yet  as  Ex- 
excutive  machines  they  were  very  desirable. 

It  was  only  the  other  day  that,  in  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  the  very  liegemen  who  had  been, 
the  loudest  in  the  land  in  encoring  the  President’s  denunciations  of  banks,  became  borrowers,  in 
the  name  of  the  State,  from  banks  !  And  last  fall,  when  this  anti-bank  President  came  back  to  the 


seat  of  Government,  after  an  electioneering  absence  for  a  third  of  a  whole  year,  and  some  office¬ 
holders  got  up  a  cold  pageant  to  greet  his  return,  you  saw  him,  fellow- citizens,  paraded  through 
your  streets  in  the  custody  of  a  committee  of  bank  directors.  Banks  or  no  banks,  it  would,  per¬ 
haps,  be  better  for  the  country,  if  his  habitual  advisers  were  personally  as  respectable  and  intel¬ 
ligent  as  those  gentlemen.  But  the  companionship  was  an  edifying  commentary  on  the  recent 
annual  messages. 

Surely  the  position,  or  rather  the  multitude  of  positions,  which  the  Administration  occupies 
towards  banks,  is  ridiculous  beyond  all  that  farce-writers  or  caricaturists  have  hitherto  imagined. 
What  like  it  has  ever  proceeded  from  the  pen  of  Fielding,  or  the  pencil  of  Hogarth?  Our 
neighbor,  Mr.  Robinson,  has  never  yet  had  such  a  subject  to  try  his  hand  on.  The  Adminis¬ 
tration  endeavor  to  excuse  their  inconsistencies,  when  they  make  a  bankish  movement  by  say¬ 
ing — for  what  will  they  not  say  ? — that  the  unhappy  circumstances  of  the  country  have  been  pro¬ 
duced,  not  by  their  own  vicious  policy,  but  by  the  banks  themselves — that  it  is  the  banks  that 
have  made  the  Government  a  borrower  and  a  beggar.  I  make  no  answer  to  this  pretence,  for  it 
deserves  none.  But  let  us  concede  the  explanation  to  be  true,  as  it  is  not,  and  what  follows  ? 
Why,  that  whatever  may  have  been  the  origin  of  the  present  distresses,  the  sub-Treasury  is  not 
the  remedy  at  this  time,  at  any  rate.  And  yet  it  is  pressed  as  one  of  instant,  immediate  neces¬ 
sity  ;  as  a  matter  of  life  and  death. 

Retention  or  Defaulters  in  Office. 

WTe  come  now  to  the  passage  in  the  resolutions  which  states,  as  a  cause  of  “alarm,”  “the 
*  retention  in  office  of  proved  defaulters,  and,  in  some  cases,  confessedly  on  account  of  the  politi- 
‘  cal  influence  of  themselves,  their  relations,  or  friends.”  On  this  head,  it  will  be  impossible  for 
me  to  do  more  than  exhibit  to  you  a  few  cases  by  way  of  specimen. 

And,  first,  I  call  your  attention  to  the  case  of  Josf.ph  Reckless,  Collector  at  Perth  Amboy, 
in  New  Jersey.  This  officer  wilfully  withheld  from  the  United  States  a  credit  for  tonnage  mon¬ 
ey  received  for  a  vessel :  his  excuse  was,  that  he  retained  it  to  meet  various  claims  against  the 
vessel,  for  which  claims  he  had,  as  he  pretended,  made  himself  liable.  The  pretence  was  falsi¬ 
fied  by  the  proof.  He  also,  in  his  accounts  with  the  Government,  exhibited  fraudulent  receipts, 
signed  by  the  revenue  boatmen,  for  an  amount  greatly  exceeding  that  actually  paid  to  them — the 
sum  charged  being  $447,  and  the  amount  paid  only  $145.  The  falsehood  of  the  receipts  was 
admitted,  and  the  apology  was,  that  the  Treasury  officers  had  refused  to  allow  certain  commis¬ 
sions  and  expenses  which  had  been  improperly  charged  by  the  collector,  and  that  he  therefore 
included  them  in  the  receipts  for  the  wages  of  the  boatmen;  and  in  a  letter  (January  22,  1835) 
to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  he  admits  that  “  this  mode  of  keeping  the  accounts  and  making 
those  charges  has  continued  ever  since.  He  pretended  that  it  was  suggested  by  the  deputy  col¬ 
lector.  The  proof  was,  that  the  collector  insisted,  against  the  remonstrances  of  the  deputy  col¬ 
lector,  that  the  accounts  should  be  made  out  in  this  fraudulent  manner,  and  commanded  the  dep¬ 
uty  collector,  on  his  allegiance,  so  to  make  them  out.  It  was  further  proved  that,  on  a  represen¬ 
tation  from  the  deputy  collector,  that  the  office  would  need  $600  for  disbursements,  the  collector 
said  that  “  he  would  draw  for  a  good  round  sum,  say  $3,000  or  $4,000 that  he  actually  ap¬ 
plied  for  and  obtained  $2,000  ;  that  this  advance,  being  made  after  the  expiration  of  the  second 
quarter  of  a  year,  could  not  be  entered  to  the  credit  of  the  Government  in  the  accounts  for  that 
quarter,  but  stood  over  to  be  entered  into  the  accounts  for  the  quarter  in  which  it  was  received; 
that,  when  the  accounts  for  the  second  quarter  were  received,  the  collector,  overlooking  the  fact 
that  $2,000  had  been  advanced,  authorized  the  deputy  collector  to  draw  for  $600,  as  in  settle¬ 
ment  of  the  balance  of  $535  86,  standing  in  the  accounts  of  the  second  quarter,  as  advanced  by 
the  collector,  but  which  was  covered  by  the  prior  advance  of  $2,000  ;  and  that  the  deputy  collect¬ 
or  remonstrated,  but  unavailingly,  against  the  collector’s  drawing  for  the  $600,  the  authority  to 
do  so  having  resulted  from  an  oversight. 

This  is  the  case  of  Reckless,  as  proved  by  James  Parker,  a  congressional  partisan  of  the 
Administration,  and  other  witnesses.  A  complaint  was  laid  before  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas¬ 
ury  in  1835  ;  explanations  were  required  from  Reckless  and  given  by  him;  affidavits  were  taken 
on  both  sides,  the  District  Attorney  of  the  United  States  acting  as  counsel  for  Reckless.  The 
refusal  to  account  promptly  for  public  money  advanced  by  mistake  would,  in  former  days,  have 
been  deemed  good  cause  for  removal.  In  the  instance  of  Reckless,  this  is  a  mere  incident,  a 
trifle,  in  comparison  with  the  rest  of  the  case.  It  is  a  case  in  which  a  high  fiscal  officer  suborns 
an  inferior  to  falsify  accounts ;  exhibits  false  and  fraudulent  accounts  ;  and  is  kept  in  office. 

2.  I  shall  next  notice  the  case  of  William  Linn,  Receiver  of  public  money  at  Vandalia,  Il¬ 
linois.  This  man  habitually  violated  the  law  of  the  land  and  the  instructions  of  the  Treasury 
Department,  and  contumaciously  disregarded  the  admonitions  of  the  Secretary  requiring  him  to 
deposite  the  public  money,  to  pay  it  over,  and  to  render  his  accounts.  When  was  he  dismissed  ? 
vou  are  about  to  ask.  He  was  not  dismissed  at  all.  On  the  contrary,  when  his  term  of  ser¬ 
vice  expired,  he  was  reappointed.  Mr.  Secretary  Woodbury,  in  announcing  the  reappoint¬ 
ment,  informs  the  officer  that,  should  his  misconduct  be  repeated,  it  would  “be  reported  for  the 
action  of  the  Executive.”  But  Mr.  Linn,  seeing  what  the  “action  of  the  Executive”  had  been., 


14 


might  well  say  to  the  Secretary,  “There  is  no  terror,  Cassius,  in  your  threats.”  He  felt  none  ; 
and  continued,  as  was  to  have  been  expected,  to  act  under  the  second  appointment  as  he  hail 
acted  under  the  first.  At  last,  the  natural  result  came  to  pass.  He  wound  up  a  defaulter.  But 
even  then  he  was  not  dismissed.  He  was  permitted  to  resign,  a  peculator  in  the  sum  of  fifty- 

five  THOUSAND  NINE  HUNDRED  AND  SIXTY-TWO  DOLLARS  AND  SIX  CENTS. 

3.  Wiley  P.  Harris,  Receiver  of  public  money  at  Columbus,  Mississippi.  Between  the 
6th  of  March,  1834,  and  the  31st  of  August,  1836 — an  interval  of  more  than  two  years  and 
five  months — the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  sent  to  Mr.  Harris  no  fewer  than  fifteen  communi¬ 
cations,  some  threatening,  some  coaxing,  and  many  of  them  apologetic,  complaining  of  his  official 
misconduct.  He  neither  made  the  returns  required  by  law,  nor  paid  over  the  public  moneyS ; 
and,  as  Victor  M.  Garesche,  “appointed  to  examine  the  land  offices,”  officially  stated  to  the 
Secretary,  he  was  a  notorious  sot.  “They  all  consider,”  says  Garesche,  “that  his  intemper- 
“  ance  has  been  his  greatest  crime,  and  that  the  loss  of  his  money  has  been  caused  by  that  of  his 
“  reason;  and  that,  as  in  algebra,  the  minus  on  one  side  has  been  made  plus  on  the  other.” 
Nevertheless,  Mr.  John  F.  H.  Claiborne,  afterwards  a  sort  of  ad  interim  representative  in  Con¬ 
gress  from  Mississippi,  in  a  letter  to  the  President  of  the  United  States,  protesting  against  the 
threatened  removal  of  Harris,  boasts  of  “the  honor  of  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  him;” 
says  “Poindexter  hates  Col.  Martin  with  the  malignity  of  a  demon;  and  nothing  would  rejoice 
“  him  more  than  the  expulsion  of  Gen.  Harris,  whom  he  knows  to  be  one  of  the  main  pillars 
“  of  the  democratic  cause ,  and  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  distinguished  friends  of  the  Admin- 
“  istration  in  Mississippi.  His  family  and  connexions  are  extremely  influential,  and  all  of 
“  them  are  co-operating  with  us  in  the  arduous  struggle  which  we  are  now  making.  They 
“  are  true  democrats ;  and'  the  hank,  nullifying,  and  White  parties  would  shout  ‘victory’  at  any 
“  blow  aimed  at  them.  We  are  now  in  the  midst  of  an  electioneering  campaign.  Gov.  Run- 
“  nells,  R.  Walker,  Major  B.  W.  Edwards,  and  myself,  constitute  the  Democratic  Van  Buren 
“  ticket.  It  will  he  a  close  contest .”  “With  high  respect,  I  remain  your  excellency’s  most  obe- 
“  dient  servant.”  That  the  writer  of  the  letter  was  the  “  most  "obedient  servant”  of  his  “Ex¬ 
cellency,”  there  can  be  no  doubt;  but  it  is  not  easy  to  imagine  that  he  had  a  “high  respect” 
for  his  correspondent.  The  letter  could  not  be  without  effect  on  “the  action  of  the  Executive.” 
The  topics  were  too  well  chosen  to  fail  of  influencing  the  quarter  to  which  they  were  addressed. 
In  this  respect,  Mr.  Claiborne’s  letter  is  not  excelled  by  Mark  Antony’s  oration  over  the  dead 
body  of  Caesar.  It  was  decisive.  Harris  went  on  treading  in  his  own  “footsteps,”  until,  in  the 
summer  of  1836,  the  balance  of  public  money  in  his  hands  amounted  to  $128,884  70.  He  then, 
on  the  31st  of  August,  was  not  dismissed,  but,  in  a  letter  to  the  President,  voluntarily  proposed 
to  resign.  In  his  letter,  this  confessed  defaulter  actually  nominated  his  successor !  To  this  he 
naturally  apprehended  no  objection,  as  the  President  had  undertaken  to  nominate  his  own  suc¬ 
cessor.  “I  will,”  says  Mr.  Harris  to  the  President,  “take  the  liberty  of  recommending  to  you 
“  for  appointment,  as  my  successor,  Col.  Gordon  D.  Boyd,  of  Attala  county.  You  are  prob- 
“  ably  acquainted  with  his  public  character,  as  he  has  been  for  several  years  a  prominent  mem- 
“  her  of  our  State  Legislature,  and  has  been  throughout  an  ardent  supporter  of  your  Adminis - 
“  tration,  and  an  unyielding  advocate  of  the  principles  of  democracy .”  But  the  good  of  “  de- 
mocray”  was  not,  it  seems,  Mr.  Harris’s  only  motive  for  the  nomination.  He  had  an  eye,  too,  to 
his  own  good.  “This  request  is  made  in  his  [Boyd’s]  behalf  in  part  on  my  own  account.  As  he 
•“  is  my  warm  personal  friend,  he  will  willingly  afford  me  every  facility  in  his  power  to  trace 
“  out  and  explain  any  errors  which  may  have  occurred  while  the  office  was  under  my  charged 1 

The  nomination  thus  made,  and  thus  enforced,  was  adopted  by  the  President!  Boyd  was  ap¬ 
pointed.  Mr.  Harris’s  letter  led  to  a  “juggle  of  state”  between  the  President  and  the  Secreta¬ 
ry,  which  ended  in  Harris’s  resigning.  The  amount  of  his  defalcation,  subsequently  re¬ 
ported,  was  ONE  HUNDRED  AND  NINE  THOUSAND  ONE  HUNDRED  AND  SEVENTY-EIGHT  DOLLARS 

and  eight  cents  ;  about  twenty  thousand  dollars  less  than  the  amount  stated  in  Mr.  Secretary 
Woodbury’s  letter  of  June  6,  1836. 

4.  Gordon  D.  Boyd,  Receiver,  &c.,  at  Columbus,  Mississippi.  Yes,  Boyd  was  appointed 
under  the  nomination,  and  “to  carry  out  [the]  principles  and  policy”  of,  his  “illustrious  prede¬ 
cessor.”  And  he  did  so.  This  “unyielding  advocate  of  the  principles  of  democracy”  neglected 
to  make  returns,  to  pay  over  the  public  money,  and  even  to  give  the  bond  for  the  performance  of 
his  duty,  which  the  law  required.  He  soon  became  a  defaulter  in  upwards  of  fifty-five  thousand 
dollars.  Mr.  Garesche,  who  appears  to  have  had  “the  honor  of  an  intimate  acquaintance”  with 
Mr.  Boyd,  and  to  have  been  a  teacher  of  moral  philosophy  to  the  President,  and  physician  to  his 
conscience,  as  well  as  an  examiner  of  land  offices,  informs  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  in  a  let¬ 
ter  dated  June  14,  1837,  that  Boyd  “seems  really  penitent;”  and  that  he  has  perhaps  only  been 
“led  away  from  his  duty  by  the  example  of  his  predecessor,  and  a  certain  looseness  in  the  code  of 
“  morality  which  here  does  not  move  in  so  limited  a  circle  as  it  does  with  us  at  home  mean¬ 
ing  himself,  of  course,  and,  it  may  be  presumed,  Mr.  Van  Buren  and  other  purists  at  Washing¬ 
ton.  Garesche  goes  on  to  say  :  “  Another  receiver  would  probably  follow  ‘  in  the  footsteps’  of 
the  two.  You  will  not ,  therefore,  he  surprised  if  I  recommend  his  being  retained,  in  prefer¬ 
ence  to  another  appointment ;  for  he  has  his  hands  full  now ,  and  will  not  he  disposed  to  specu- 


15 


late  any  more.”  The  old  fable  of  the  fox  and  the  hedge-hog  !  The  hedge-hog  wished  to  drive 
off  the  flies  which  had  settled  on  the  fox’s  eyes  and  years.  “No,”  said  the  fox,  “they  arc  full 
now — if  they  should  leave  me,  a  fresh  swarm  would  take  their  places” — new  receivers  would  fol¬ 
low  in  their  footsteps — “and  I  should  not  have  a  drop  of  blood  left  in  my  body.” 

Truly,  this  Mr.  Garesche  is  a  gentleman  whose  knowledge  is  as  various  as  his  business ;  he 
seems  the  admirable  Crichton  and  Caleb  Quotem  in  a  state  of  fusion  ;  he  is  as  deep  in  dEsop’s 
fables  as  in  ethics,  mathematics,  land  laws,  and  accounts.  Garesche  thus  enforces  his  arguments 
for  retaining  Boyd  in  office  : 

“He  will  have  his  bond  signed  by  the  same  sureties ,  and  forwarded  in  a  few  days  to  Wash- 
“  ington ;  this  speaks  favorably.  He  has,  moreover,  pledged  his  word  that,  if  retained,  he 
“  will  strictly  obey  the  law,  and  receive  nothing  but  specie  in  payment  for  lands.” 

Mr.  Garesche,  apparently  with  great  composure,  says  that  he  has  “  enjoined  the  closing  of 
the  land  office  until  the  bond  is  completed  and  returned.  No  land  has  been  sold  since  the  2 9th 
ultimo.”  In  Boyd’s  schedule  of  assets,  he  returns  20,000  acres  of  land,  and  his  interest  in  half 
the  profits  which  may  be  made  out  of  15,000  acres  more.  These  lands  were  stated  on  the  floor 
of  Congress  to  be  part  of  the  public  domain,  which,  by  virtue  of  his  office,  he  had  transferred  to 
himself,  either  without  paying  a  single  dollar  for  them,  or  by  paying  for  them  out  of  the  public 
money.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  pecuniary  part  alone  of  his  defalcation  was  fifty-five  thousard 
rire  hdxdrei)  axd  siXTY-FivE  aouARs  ard  fifty  four  certs.  Mr.  Secretary  Woodbury 
is  of  opinion  that  Boyd’s  course  was  “  frank  and  honorable.”  The  principal  evidence,  in  the 
official  correspondence,  of  his  frankness  is  the  following  ingenuous  declaration  in  his  letter  of 
July  10,  1837,  to  the  Secretary:  “The  truth  is,  lam  in  default.”  This  undoubtedly  would, 
in  former  days,  have  been  sufficiently  “  frank”  for  the  decisive  “action  of  the  Executive.” 
“  You  will  not  be  surprised”  that  the  Secretary  should  commend  Mr.  Boyd  for  his  “honorable” 
conduct;  for  you  have  seen  that  honor  moves  in  a  very  limited  circle,  indeed,  among  “us  at 
home.” 

Of  these  two  receivers  at  Columbus,  Mississippi,  one,  you  have  been  told,  was  a  “  main  pil¬ 
lar  of  the  democratic  cause,”  and  a  “true  democrat;”  and  the  other  an  “ardent  supporter”  of 
President  Jackson’s  “  Administration,”  and  an  “unyielding  advocate  of  the  principles  of  de¬ 
mocracy.”  Mr.  Garesche,  nothing  daunted  by  these  precedents,  in  a  letter,  dated  October  12, 
1837,  to  Mr.  Secretary  Woodbury,  recommends  as  a  successor  to  Boyd  “another  warm 
friend  of  the  Administration.”  The  “action  of  the  Executive”  on  this  recommendation  is  not 
disclosed  in  the  Congressional  documents,  from  which,  exclusively,  I  have  taken  the  foregoing 
facts.  But  it  is  probable  that  the  nominee  was  not  appointed  ;  for  he  seems  to  have  forgotten  to 
\  secure  the  support  of  Mr.  Boyd  himself. 

Boyd’s  case  is  exuberant  in  other  topics  for  our  instruction  ;  but  I  pass  on  to  my  final  illus¬ 
tration  of  this  branch  of  the  report,  the  case  of 

5.  Jour  Sperceii,  Receiver  of  public  moneys  at  Fort  Wayne,  Indiana.  This  officer  failed 
to  make  the  returns  of  the  public  money  required  by  law  ;  for  two  months  did  not  pay  over  a 
single  dollar ;  for  nearly  five  months  retained  almost  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  dollars  ;  refused  to 
answer  letters  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  remonstrating  against  his  neglect;  used  the 
public  money ;  and  habitually  speculated  on  moneys  paid  to  him  for  public  lands.  On  this  last 
head,  Nathaniel  West,  jr.,  appointed  examiner  of  the  land  office  at  Fort  Wayne,  states  “that 
“  the  Government  money  paid  in  by  one  person  has  been  loaned  out  by  the  Receiver  in  exchange 
“  for  uncurrent  or  not  land  office  money,  he  receiving  for  his  own  private  use  the  discount  as 
“agreed  upon;  and  the  same  Government  money  again  is  passed  into  the  land  office,  to  be 
“  again  used  for  the  like  purpose,  in  pay  for  the  public  lands.” 

This  was,  surely,  a  very  strong  case.  But,  fellow-citizens,  “you  wall  not,  therefore,  be  sur¬ 
prised,”  as  Mr.  Garesche  would  say,  to  learn  that  nothing  was  done  with  it.  It  became  the 
duty  of  Mr.  Senator  Hendricks,  as  “  one  of  the  main  pillars  of  the  democratic  cause,”  to  arrest 
“the  action  of  the  Executive,”  and  he  did  so.  He  thus  writes  to  Mr.  Secretary  Woodbury, 
on  behalf  of  Spencer : 

“  It  would,  to  some  extent,  produce  excitement ,  if  he  were  removed ;  for  he  has  many  warm 
“  and  influential  friends  both  at  Fort  Wayne  and  in  Dearborn  county,  from  which  he  removed 
“  to  his  present  residence.  Better  let  it  be.” 

And  it  was  let  be  ! 

In  a  letter  to  the  Secretary,  written  a  few  weeks  after,  by  Mr.  Spencer,  in  excuse  for  his 
neglect  to  pay  over  the  public  money,  he  brings  forward  these  same  friends  in  the  following 
“  frank”  terms : 

“  My  Democratic  frif.rds  think  that  I  ought  not  to  leuve  until  after  w=  hold  our  elec- 
•“  tior  for  Presidert  on  the  7th  of  November ,  which  I  have  conclud  d  to  await ;  and  shall 
•*s  leave  on  that  evening  or  the  next  morning,  to  deposite,  with  all  the  funds  in  hand  up  to  that 
«e  time.” 

Spencer,  on  the  23d  August,  1836,  was  a  defaulter  to  the  amount  of  five  thousand  two  hund 
red  and  six  dollars  and  eighty-four  cents.  He  is  still  in  office. 


1G 


These  cases,  fellow-citizens,  of  the  Receivers  Linn,  Harris,  Boyd,  and  Spencer,  arc  only 
four  out  of  scores  of  similar  defalcations  in  a  single  branch  of  the  public  service — a  few 
“beauties'’  of  the  spoils  system.  They  fully  sustain  the  passage  of  the  report  which  they  relate 
to  ;  they  show  you  the  public  Treasury  plundered  not  only  with  impunity  but  with  triumph. 

Let  us  now  pause  for  a  moment  to  contemplate  the  contrasted  “action  of  the  Executive’* 
in  other  days.  Materials  for  exact  comparison  do  not  indeed  exist;  for  such  peculations  are 
without  precedent  in  our  history.  But  we  may  derive  instruction  from  the  minor  examples. 

D  uring  the  Presidency  of  Washington,  that  “truest”  of  all  “democrats”  in  any  constitutional 
sense  of  the  word,  bills  to  the  amount  of  three  thousand  dollars  had  been  drawn  on  the  collector 
of  Tappahannock,  and  had  been  returned  protested.  Alexander  Hamilton,  then  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  addressed  a  communication  to  the  President  stating  the  fact,  and  added  : 

“  This  conduct,  though  I  trust  proceeding  from  no  ill  motive  in  the  collector,  is  of  a  nature 
“  so  fatal  to  the  punctual  collection  of  the  revenue ,  and  at  the  same  time  so  vitally  injurious 
“  to  the  public  credit ,  that  1  cannot  forbear  to  submit  it  as  my  opinion  that  the  public  good  re- 
“  quires  the  superseding  of  the  officer.” 

And  the  officer  teas  superseded.  A  few  months  after,  the  collector  at  Yorktown  “suffered 
“  Treasury  drafts  to  return  unpaid,  which  were  drawn  upon  moneys  reported  by  him  to  be  in 
“  his  hands.  All  the  drafts  which  were  at  first  declined  were  afterwards  paid.”  Mr.  Hamil¬ 
ton  apprized  the  President  of  these  facts  ;  transmitted  to  him  the  collector’s  “letters  of  apology 
on  the  subject,”  and  said  : 

“  I  perceive  nothing  substantially  to  distinguish  this  case  from  that  of  the  collector  of  Tappa- 
“  bannock,  who  was  lately  superseded  on  a  similar  account.  Nor  can  I  forbear,  however  pain- 
“  ful  the  task,  to  submit  it  as  my  opinion,  in  this  as  in  that  case,  that  the  good  of  the  public 
“  service  requires  a  displacement  of  the  officer.  Punctuality  in  this  respect  is  too  indispensa- 
“  ble  not  to  be  made  the  invariable  condition  of  continuance  in  office .” 

And  the  officer  was  displaced. 

And  so,  after  Mr.  Hamilton  had  retired  from  the  Treasury  Department,  his  successor,  Oliver 
Wolcott,  transmitted  to  the  President  documents  showing  that  the  collector  at  Vienna,  in 
Maryland,  had  “neglected  his  duty  in  failing  to  collect,  or  to  institute  in  season,  suits  for  the 
“  recovery  of  bonds  for  duties  due  to  the  United  States.”  The  Secretary  also  stated  : 

“  The  collector  has  moreover  failed  to  pay  certain  drafts,  drawn  on  him  by  the  Treasurer  of 
“  the  United  States,  for  moneys  appearing  by  returns  to  the  Treasury  to  be  on  hand;  and  in 
“  this  respect  he  is  found  to  be  in  the  same  predicament  as  the  collectors  of  York  and  Tappa- 
“  hannock,  who  were  superseded. 

“  The  Secretary  is  firmly  of  opinion  that  the  good  of  the  public  service  requires,  that  this 
“  officer  should  be  displaced ;  and,  from  inquiries  which  he  has  made  of  Mr.  Murray,  of  the 
“  House  of  Representatives,  he  is  induced  to  believe  that  James  Frazier  is  a  fit  character  to  suc- 
“  ceed  to  the  office.” 

And  this  collector  was  displaced,  and  Mr.  Frazier,  because  he  was  a  “ fit  character ,”  was  ap¬ 
pointed  to  succeed  the  removed  officer. 

How  slight  are  these  cases,  in  either  their  pecuniary  or  moral  aspect,  when  compared  with  the 
modern  examples  which  we  have  just  contemplated  !  Yet,  as  the  “public  good”  forbade  tolera¬ 
tion  of  official  misconduct,  the  Secretaries,  Hamilton  and  Wolcott,  recommended,  and  the  Pre¬ 
sident  directed,  the  dismissal  of  the  offenders.  And,  in  such  a  course,  we  see  the  reason  why  * 
similar  transgressions  were  so  rare.  While  the  Father  of  his  Country  presided  over  its  councils, 
and  so  long  as  his  example  influenced  them,  no  man  was  appointed  to  office  unless  he  was  a 
“fit  character;”  and,  if  an  officer  misbehaved,  no  partisan  mediator  dared  to  intercede  for  him 
on  the  ground  that  he  was  a  “pillar”  of  this  party  or  the  other;  that  his  removal  would  “pro¬ 
duce  excitement;”  that  he  had  “many  warm  and  influential  friends;”  that  “his  family  and 
connexions”  were  “extremely  influential;”  thajt  he  was  “in  the  midst  of  an  electioneering 
campaign;”  that  there  would  “be  a  close  contest,”  and  votes  might  be  lost  by  dismissing 
him;  and  so  “  better  let  it  be ,”  &c.  Who  would  have  ventured  to  urge  such  defences  to 
Alexander  Hamilton'?  To  him  “whose  bosom  would  have  glowed  like  a  furnace  at  its  own 
whispers  o  freproach  ;”  to  him  of  whom,  in  noticing  a  calumny  affecting  his  personal  honor,  his 
great  antagonist,  Thomas  Jefferson,  has  said,  “  Impossible  as  to  Hamilton — he  ivas  far  above 
that!”  So,  too,  was  Oliver  Wolcott  “far  above”  the  approaches  by  which  peculation  sought 
and  found  pardon,  and  even  favor,  from  a  shivering  successor.  And  when  we  ascend  to  Wash¬ 
ington — can  any  human  mind  conceive  it  possible  that  the  language  of  Claiborne  and  Harris  to 
a  President  of  the  United  States  would  have  been  addressed  by  any  sane  man,  high  or  low, 
emperor  or  beggar,  in  the  whole  world,  to  President  Washington? — to  George  Washington  ? 
No,  fellow-citizens,  you  feel  and  know — I  see  you  do — that  the  first  base  word  had  hardly 
escaped  the  lips  of  the  tempter  before  he  would  have  prayed — perhaps  the  earliest  and  only  payer 
of  his  life — that  the  earth  might  open  and  ingulf  him  ! 

The  few  cases,  mere  samples  of  a  multitude,  which  have  been  cited,  exhibit  a  picture  that  can 
scarcely  be  made  darker  than  it  is.  But  a  few  touches  must  be  added.  The  present  Chid 


17 


» 


* 


\ 


Magistrate,  when  a  Senator  of  the  United  States,  was  one  of  a  committee  which  reported  the 
noted  bill  “  for  securing  in  office  faithful  collectors  and  disbursers  of  the  revenue,  and  displacing 
defaulters.”*  He  was  afterwards  a  prominent  member  of  an  Administration  whose  practice  di¬ 
rectly  reversed  the  doctrines  of  the  bill;  which  “displaced  faithful  collectors,”  &c.  and  “secur¬ 
ed  in  office”  defaulters.  When  he  became  himself  the  head  of  the  Government,  he  “carried 
out”  this  “policy”  by  retaining  in'  office  Boyd,  Spencer,  and  the  like.  And  yet,  it  would  seem, 
that  in  theory  he  was  still  wedded  to  the  doctrines  of  his  report;  for,  in  his  message  of  December 
4,  1838,  he  shudders  “at  the  impropriety  of  diverting  public  money  to  private  purposes,”  and 
even  urges  on  Congress  that  “the  application  of  public  money  by  an  officer  of  Government  to 
private  uses  should  be  made  a  felony,  and  visited  with  severe  and  ignominious  punishment.” 
Thus,  on  his  own  showing,  men  whom  he  kept  in  offices  of  high  trust  and  responsibility  deserv¬ 
ed  to  be  in  the  penitentiary.  Is  it  conceivable  that  a  President  who  feared  to  displace  official 
robbers  lest  their  removal  should  “  produce  excitement,”  and  because  they  had  “warm  and  in¬ 
fluential  friends,”  would  dare  to  enforce  new  penal  laws  against  them  1  No.  But,  while  he 
denounced  the  offence,  and  thus  got  credit,  like  Joseph  Surface,  for  a  fine  “sentiment,”  he 
hugged  the  offender.  In  the  Blue  Book  for  September,  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-seven,  and 
in  the  Blue  Book  for  September,  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-nine,  you  will  find  the  name  of 
“John  Spencer”  as  receiver  of  the  land  office  at  Fort  Wayne,  Indiana. 

This  timidity  at  head-quarters  is  the  necessary  result  of  the  principle  that 

The  Public  Offices  are  the  Property  of  a  Party. 

It  is  a  law  of  the  spoils  system — a  law  founded  in  the  very  nature  of  man — that  the  subordi¬ 
nate  becomes  a  viceroy  over  the  superior.  At  an  early  period  of  our  Government,  Congress  de¬ 
cided  that  the  President  exclusively  had  the  constitutional  power  of  removal  ;  and,  however 
unsparingly  it  has  been  exerted  in  later  years,  yet  on  occasions  loudly  invoking  its  exercise,  it 
has  slept,  because  the  executive  was  without  moral  strength  to  punish  a  powerful  delinquent. 

The  Constitution  declares  that  “the  Executive  power  shall  be  vested  in  a  President  of  the 
United  States  of  America;”  but  when  factious  combinations  succeeded  in  placing  this  Constitu¬ 
tion  in  the  hands  of  the  spoils  party,  the  Executive  power  was  distributed  among  the  small  War¬ 
wicks — the  king  makers  of  the  several  towns,  villages,  and  neighborhoods  of  the  country. 
These  local  cabals  dictated  removals  and  appointments  in  their  respective  districts  ;  and  the 
dictation  was  obeyed  by  even  that 

“  Fiery  etter-eap,  that  Pactions  chiel, 

As  hot  as  ginger,  and  as  stiff  as  steel,” 


the  indomitable  Jackson.  You  remember  the  facts  which  were  brought  to  light  in  the  first^year 
of  his  Presidency,  by  a  squabble  for  “  rewards”  in  a  principal  city  of  the  Union.  Those  “  Boston 
disclosures”  proved  that,  in  advance  of  his  election,  a  junta  in  Boston  had  apportioned  each 
man’s  share  of  the  spoils;  and  that,  when  elected,  he  disposed  of  the  federal  offices  in  Boston  in 
exact  conformity  with  the  plan  transmitted  to  him.  You  remember,  too,  the  removal  of  an 
officer  at  Russell,  in  Massachusetts,  and  the  appointment  of  a  successor,  on  a  requisition  signed 
by  persons  representing  themselves  to  be  the  party  committee  of  the  village.  The  successor 
turned  out  to  be  a  common  vagabond,  and  the  signers  to  be  men  of  straw.  But  the  hoax  as¬ 
certain  d  a  principle.  Y*ou  remember  a  thousand  other  instances  in  which  the  President  of  the 
United  States  was  a  mere  clerk, for  registering  the  edicts  of  “pillars  of  the  democratic  cause.” 
But  there  is  one  case  with  which  you  are  perhaps  less  familiar.  When  our  present  generalissimo, 
Mr.  Van  Buren,  had  the"  “  dory”  of  serving  in  a  civil  capacity,  that  of  Secretary  of  State,  un¬ 
der  his  “  venerated  chief,”  and  just  after  his  “  glory”  began  to  bud,  he  received  an  order  from 
Louisiana  for  certain  removals  and  appoint  ents  His  answer,  which  is  brief,  pithy,  and  some¬ 
what  of  a  curiosity,  you  will  find  at  page  2793  of  the  8th  volume  of  that  useful  work,  Gales  So 
Seaton’s  Register  of  Congressional  Debates.  It  bears  date  April  20,  1829,  and  is  in  the  follow¬ 
ing  words  : 

“  My  Dear  Sir  :  I  have  the  honor  of  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  yours  of  the  21st  ultimo, 
and  of  informing  you  that  the  removals  and  appointments  which  you  recommended  were  made 
on  the  day  your  letter  was  received. 

“  With  respect,  your  friend,  &c.” 


“  You  will  not,”  1  am  sure,  “  be  surprised”  at  this  letter;  or,  if  you  are,  it  will  be  only  at 
the  long  interval  between  the  date  of  Mr  Overton’s  letter  and  that  of  the  answer.  This,  how¬ 
ever,  is  easily  explained.  Mr.  Van  Buren  did  not  take  possession  of  the  State  Department  for 
some  time  after  his  appointment;  his  “democratic  friends”  thinking  that  he  “  ought  not  to 
leave”  New  York  until  after  he  h  >d  drilled  some  of  “  our  elections.”  But  the  moment  he  got 
his  orders  he  obeyed  them  “  The  ronnvals  and  appointments  which  you  recommended  were 
made  on  the  day  your  Idler  was  rece  red.  ” 


*  See  Report  on  Executive  Patronage,  May  4,  1826,  Senate  documents  1st  session  19th 
Congress,  vol.  4,  No.  8S,  p.  7. 

2 


18 


/ 


The  authority  which  could  command,  was  of  course  competent  to  prevent,  removals  from  of¬ 
fice.  It  was  exercised  as  boldly,  and  submitted  to  as  tamely,  in  the  one  class  of  cases  as  in  the 
other.  Examine,  fellow-citizens,  the  official  correspondence  between  the  peculators,  the  Secre¬ 
tary  of  the  Treasury,  and  the  special  agents  of  the  Government — the  thieves,  the  arch  thief- 
catcher,  and  his  beagles.  You  will  find  the  peculators  and  their  advocates  writing  with  the 
confidence  of  men  who  felt  their  ground,  and  knew  that  it  was  strong ;  “  the  truth  is,  I  am  in 
default,”  and  you  must  admit  it  is  “  frank  and  honorable”  in  me  to  say  so  ;  but  I  have  “man}' 
warm  and  influential  friends my  “  family  and  connexions  are  extremely  influential I  am 
“in  the  midst  of  an  electioneering  campaign  “  it  will  be  a  close  contest I  am  a  “  distin¬ 
guished  friend  of  the  Administration  a  “  true  democrat and  a  “  main  pillar  of  the  democratic 
cause my  removal  “would  produce  excitement;”  “better  let  it  be;”  and,  at  any  rate,  if 
Curtis,  Wise,  and  their  “associates”  wont  “let  it  be,”  if  they  will  insist  that  the  people 
Shall  not  be  stripped  naked  of  all  their  money — xot  be  left  without  a  dollar  to  go  to  market 
with — at  least  give  me  the  option  of  resigning ,  and  put  some  “warm  personal  friend”  in  my 
place  who  will  figure  down  the  balance  against  me.  But  I  advise  you  neither  to  dismiss  me, 
nor  to  allow  me  to  resign — beware  of  the  consequences  ! — keep  me  in  office — only  give  me  a 
chance  of  stealing  again,  and  I  “  pledge  my  word,”  nay,  my  “honor,”  that  I  wont  do  it.  This 
is  the  tone  of  the  defaulters  ;  while  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  is  not  merely  “  afraid  to  strike,” 
but  crouches  before  his  too  powerful  vassal,  and  the  Government  missionary  amuses  himself 
with  the  game  going  on  between  the  Administration  and  its  “pillars,”  and  acts,  like  an  auc¬ 
tioneer,  as  agent  for  both  parties. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  features  of  the  report  of  the  last  investigating  committee,  is  the 
dictatorial  tone  of  Mr.  Hoyt,  the  present  Collector  at  New  York,  in  his  correspondence  with 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  He  attempted  the  same  tone  towards  the  committee,  but  soon 
found  that  they  were  made  of  “sterner  stuff.” 

Your  knowledge  of  human  nature  will  tell  you  that  insubordination  is  by  no  means  inconsist¬ 
ent  with  servility.  Mr.  Bond,  in  his  celebrated  speech,  delivered  in  April,  1838,  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  mentions  a  case  in  which  the  Attorney  General,  the  legal  adviser  of  the 
Government,  had  given  an  opinion;  that  President  Jackson  endorsed  on  the  opinion :  “Mr. 
Butler  has  not  examined  this  case  with  his  usual  care  :  let  this  paper  be  referred  back  to  him, 
with  a  copy  of  the  charter,  for  his  reconsideration  ;”  and  that,  accordingly,  the  Attorney  Gen¬ 
eral  gave  a  new  opinion  in  conformity  with  the  President’s  mandate.  Some  of  you  here  pres¬ 
ent  know  more  than  Mr.  Bond  of  this  case;  and  know  something  also  of  another  very  like  it. 
One  gentleman  is  fully  and  exactly  informed  on  the  subject ;  and  he  will,  I  hope,  state  the  facts 
to  you  before  we  adjourn. 

The  right  vested  by  the  “spoils  system”  in  cabals,  and  even  in  individuals,  to  demand  the 
public  offices  as  private  property,  was  so  well  understood  that  the  President’s  chancellor,  Garesche, 
in  his  letter  of  October  12,  1837,  calls  a  warm  friend  of  the  Administration,  who  wanted  office, 
not  an  applicant,  but  a  “ postulant .”  This  significant  word  has  been  engrafted  by  the  reformers 
on  our  language,  just  as  new  words  were  coined  in  France  to  suit  the  ever  varying  atrocities  of 
her  Revolution. 

Some  of  the  services  in  which  the  Executive  has  recognised  a  title  to  this  new  species  of 
property,  were  of  a  nature  which,  in  the  judgment  of  mankind,  ought  to  have  doomed  the 
“postulant”  of  office  to  a  felon’s  cell.  You  remember  that  in  1833,  one  Hocker,  sheriff  of 
Lincoln  county,  in  Kentucky,  fraudulently  “withheld,”  as  he  called  it,  the  poll-books  of  that 
county,  and  thus  prevented  the  return  of  a  representative  to  Congress,  whom  the  people  had 
elected  against  the  wishes  of  Mr.  Van  Buren’s  “  venerated  chief.”  This  service  was  so  highly 
valued,  that,  after  a  decent  delay,  Hocker  was  made  a  postmaster,  the  incumbent  of  the  office 
having  been  displaced  to  make  room  for  him.  Afterwards,  in  1837,  the  chairman  of  the  com¬ 
mittee  for  inquiring  into  the  condition  of  the  Executive  Departments,  &c.  addressed  a  letter  to 
the  Postmaster  General  requesting  for  the  committee  certain  papers,  among  which  were  “  the 
papers  and  recommendations  in  favor  of  the  appointment  of  the  present  postmaster,  Alfred  Hock- 

*  er.”  Mr.  Kendall  refused  to  send  the  papers,  remarking:  “  In  justice  to  a  persecuted  fellow  - 
4  citizen ,  I  deem  it  proper  to  add,  that  Alfred  Hooker's  private  character  is  believed  to  be  without 
6  a  blemish ,  and  his  qualifications  undoubted  ;  and  that,  to  hunt  him  through  life  for  an  error  of 
6  opinion,  in  a  particular  case,  as  to  his  legal  power,  appears  to  be  as  unjust  as  it  would  be  in- 

*  human.”*  Hocker  and  Kendall  “  fellow-citizens  !”  Yes,  truly,  they  are  so.  But,  just  now, 
there  is  no  fellowship  in  their  fortunes.  “Citizen”  Hocker,  after  another  “ decent  delay,” 
fell  into  a  second  “  error  of  opinion .”  Having  before  determined  that  he  was  bound  to  obey 
the  law  against  stealing  only  as  he  understood  it,  and  understanding  that  it  did  not  apply  to 
poll-books,  or,  if  it  did,  that  it  was  unconstitutional;  and  being  sustained  in  this  construction 
by  the  “  action  of  the  Executive”  appointing  him  to  an  office  of  trust,  he  went  only  a  single 
step  further  when  he  satisfied  himself  that  the  law  against  stealing  money  was  unconstitutional. 
And  so  he  stole  money.  As  the  Kentucky  authorities,  however,  “  understood”  that  this  law 


*  See  Rep.  No.  194,  H.  E.  21th  Cong.  2d  sess.  Journal  of  Committee,  p.  74. 


19 


was  constitutional,  and  binding  on  everybody,  and  were  about  to  visit  ‘ ‘  with  severe  and  ig-- 
nominious  punishment”  his  “  error  of  opinion ”  on  the  subject,  he  ran  away.  And,  alas  !  citi¬ 
zen  Hocker  is  now  only  an  ex-postmaster.  But  “  citizen”  Kendall  is  still  a  Postmaster  Gen¬ 
eral.  The  drama,  in  which  he  is  a  «  star”  performer,  is  still  acting.  The  fifth  act  is  yet  to  be 
played.  Before  the  curtain  falls,  other  than  merely  poetical  justice  will  doubtless  be  adminis¬ 
tered  to  his  “  errors  of  opinion.” 

In  the  transfer  of  Executive  authority,  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  the  public  press  should 
be  forgotten.  Accordingly  we  find  that,  under  the  spoils  system,  editors  of  newspapers  have 
been  important  constituents  of  “  the  power  behind  the  throne,  greater  than  the  throne  itself.” 
This  topic  is  an  endless  one,  and  it  is  too  familiar  to  justify  illustration.  But  the  peculiarity  of. 
one  example  deserves  notice.  It  has  recently  been  proved,  by  a  sworn  and  unimpeachable  wit¬ 
ness,  that,  ill  a  case  which  the  President  of  the  United  States  had  under  examination,  that  high., 
officer  thus  appealed  to  the  editor  of  his  official  journal — his  “Moniteur:”  We  can’t  allow 
Gouverneur’s  claims — they  rest  on  equitable  principles  ;  Blair,  can  we  1”  and  that  the  answer 
was,  “  Pooh!  no,  certainly  not.” 

Of  most  of  the  evils  with  which  the  reformers  have  deluged  the  country,  the  proximate  cause 
is  the  President’s  abuse  of  the 

Appointing  and  Kemoving  Power. 

To  follow  out  this  topic  into  its  details,  or  to  animadvert  on  the  proscription  which  is  its 
prominent  feature,  would  detain  you  here  till  daybreak,  and  it  would  then  be  unexhausted.  But 
it  is  important  that  your  attention  should  be  called  to  the  nativity  of  the  abuse.  President 
Jackson  was  inaugurated  on  the  4th  of  March,  1829.  The  Senate,  a  co-ordinate  branch  of  the 
Executive  power,  after  remaining  in  session  till  the  16th,  on  that  day  informed  the  President 
that  it  was  “  ready  to  adjourn,  if  he  had  no  further  communication  to  make On  the  next 
day  he  assured  them  that  “he  had  no  further  communication  to  make  the  constitutional  im¬ 
port  of  which  assurance  was,  that  he  knew  of  no  public  business  to  be  acted  on,  in  which  the 
Senate  had  a  right  to  participate.  This  declaration  was  made  just  thirteen  days  after  he  had 
solemnly  sworn  before  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  United  States,  “I  will  faithfully  execute  the  of¬ 
fice  of  President  of  the  United  States,  and  will,  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  preserve,  protect,  and 
defend  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.”  The  Senate  adjourned  on  thd  17th  of  March. 
On  the  20th,  three  days  afterwards,  certain  removals  and  appointments  were  announced  in  the 
official  journal  of  the  Government,  which  it  was  publicly  known  had  been  determined  on  weeks 
before.  And  then  the  work  “went  bravely  on.”  Among  the  “  reforms”  gazetted  on  the  28th. 
of  April,  were  the  “displacing”  of  that  “faithful  collector,”  Jonathan  Thompson,  and  the  ap¬ 
pointment  of  Samuel  Swartwout  as  his  successor,  who  was  “secured  in  office”  till  he  had  stolen 
(“withheld,”  I  believe,  is  the  word  used  by  the  Jackson  and  Van  Buren  classics)  the  “good 
round  sum”  of  one  million  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  seven  hundred 
and  five  dollars  and  sixty-nine  cevts.  Mr.  Swartwout  had  formerly  been  committed  to 
prisoir-on  a  charge  of  high  treason,  and,  in  the  opinion  of  some  of  the  Judges  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  ought  to  have  been  tried  on  it ;  and  he  was  notorious  as  an  ardent,  dashing  adventurer. 
But,  because  he  was  a  partisan  and  eulogist  of  the  President,  and,  perhaps,  for  other  personal 
reasons  more  mysterious,  his  manifest  unfitness  for  the  office  was  disregarded,  and  he  was  ap¬ 
pointed  collector  at  a  port  where  “the  customs  collected,”  as  Mr.  Secretary  Woodbury  de¬ 
clares,  “  equal  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  whole  amount  in  all  the  United  States  !” 

And  so,  John  Duer,  Attorney  of  the  United  States  for  the  southern  district  of  New  York,  a 
lawyer  of  the  highest  character,  professional  and  personal,  famed  as  well  for  his  business  habits 
as  for  his  learning,  eloquence,  and  integrity,  was  “displaced”  to  make  room  for  a  political 
agent  of  Mr.  Van  Buren.  When  the  new  officer’s  voracity  had  became  intolerable,  he  resign¬ 
ed,  and  was  succeeded  by  William  M.  Price.  As  a  lawyer,  this  man  was  known  chiefly  for* 
his  agility  in  the  old  Bailey  courts  ;  and  it  has  since  been  proved,  by  sworn  witnesses,  that  he 
was  utterly  without  responsibility,,  in  either  property  or  morals.  One  of  them  swears,  “  I  never- 
saw  the  day  when  I  would  trust  him  with  two  hundred  dollars.”  But  he  was  a  busy  partisan, 
and  therefore  was  appointed  to  an  office,  in  which  he  has  boasted  that  several  millions  of  dollars- 
passed  through  his  hands.  Passed  through!  Not  exactly.  Seventy-two  thousand  one- 
hundred  and  twenty-four  dollars  are  shown  by  the  last  Investigating  Committee  to  have 
stuck  to  his  hands ;  and  no  man  who  had  turned  his  attention  to  the  subject  doubted  that,  with, 
more  time  for  scrutiny,  the  committee  would  have  discovered  the  peculation  to  be  much  larger. 

During  the  recess  of  the  Senate  in  1829,  Joseph  Holman,  receiver  of  public  moneys  at  Fort 
Wayne,  in  Indiana,  was  removed,  for  no  reason,  except  his  preference  of  Mr.  Adams  over  Gen¬ 
eral  Jackson  as  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency,  and  Jonathan  McCarty  was  appointed  in  his 
place.  Mr.  McCarty  resigning,  John  Spencer  was  appointed  his  successor ;  and  you  have  al¬ 
ready  seen  the  result  of  this  experiment  on  the  removing  power. 

The  report  particularizes  an  abuse  of  the  appointing  and  removing  power,  which,  as  it  escaped 
punishment,  shook  our  institutions  to  their  very  foundation — the  dismissal  of  William  J.  Duane, 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  from  office,  because  he  refused  to  remove,  at  the  bidding  of  the  Pre- 


20 


f 


sident,  the  public  money  from  the  place  where  the  law  had  placed  it,  and  directed  it  to  remain  .* 
and  the  appointment  of  a  successor  for  the  avowed  purpose  of  defeating  the  legislative  will. 

Among  the  more  authoritative  indications  of  the  shock  to  the  public  mind  produced  by  this  pro¬ 
ceeding  of  the  President — in  “  taking  the  responsibility,”  as  he  called  it,  of  violating  a  law  of  ^ 

the  land — was  a  series  of  impressive  resolutions  passed  by  the  Legislature  of  Virginia — of  Vir¬ 
ginia,  the  mother  and  the  nurse  of  the  Federal  Constitution.  Two  of  the  resolutions  were  as 
follows : 

“  Resolved  by  the  General  Assembly ,  That  the  recent  act  of  the  President  of  the  United 
*c  States,  exerting  a  control  over  the  public  deposites,  by  causing  them  to  be  withheld  and  with- 
*i  drawn,  on  his  own  responsibility,  from  the  United  States  Bank,  in  which  they  had  been  or- 
<f  dered  to  be  placed  by  the  act  of  Congress  chartering  the  said  Dank,  is,  in  the  judgment  of  the 
<c  General  Assembly,  a  dangerous  and  alarming  assumption  of  power  by  that  officer,  which 
“  cannot  be  too  strongly  condemned. 

“2.  Resolved,  That  while  the  General  Assembly  will  ever  be  ready  to  sustain  the  President 
“  in  the  exercise  of  all  such  powers  as  the  Constitution  has  confided  to  him,  they  nevertheless 
<£  cannot  but  regard  with  apprehension  and  distrust  the  disposition  to  extend  his  official  au~ 

thority  beyond  its  just  and  proper  limits,  which  he  has  so  clearly  manifested  in  his  recent  in - 
“  terference  with  the  Treasusy  Department  of  the  Federal  Government,  in  the  exercise  of  a 

sound  discretion  which  Congress  has  confided  to  the  head  of  that  Department  alone.” 

I  need  not  detain  you  by  enumerating  examples  of  the  contempt  for  the  Senate  which  is  so 
striking  a  feature  of  the  new  Administrative  system.  You  remember  President  Jackson’s  espion¬ 
age  over  that  body ;  his  practice  of  availing  himself  of  casual  absences  of  Senators  to  nominate 
favorites  for  office,  whose  rejection  in  a  full  Senate  had  been  shown,  or  was  expected  to  be,  cer¬ 
tain  ;  his  appointment,  during  the  recess,  of  persons  previously  rejected  by  the  Senate ;  and,  in 
other  cases  of  similar  contumacy  on  the  part  qf  the  Senate,  his  keeping  the  office  vacant  and  its 
duties  undischarged  throughout  a  new  Congressional  session.  The  case  of  Samuel  Gwin  must 
he  fresh  in  your  memories.  This  man,  a  clerk  in  the  Post  Office  Department,  was,  in  Decem¬ 
ber,  1831,  nominated  as  register  of  the  land  office  at  Mount  Salus,  in  Mississippi,  and  rejected — 
nearly  one-half  of  the  Senators  who  voted  against  him  being  Administration  men.  In  June  fol¬ 
lowing  he  was  renominated,  on  the  strength  of  recommendatory  letters,  which,  as  there  was 
powerful  circumstantial  evidence  to  show,  were  prompted  by  the  President  himself.  The 
Senate,  nevertheless,  laid  the  nomination  on  the  table,  and  informed  the  President  that  it  was 
not  their  intention  to  take  it  up  during  the  session.  On  the  16th  of  July,  the  President  having 
informed  them  “  that  he  had  no  further  communication  to  make,”  the  Senate  adjourned  sine  die. 

On  the  24th  of  July,  the  official  gazette  announced  that  the  President  had  appointed  Samuel 
Gwin  to  be  register  of  the  land  office  at  Mount  Salus  !  This  movement  startled  the  whole  nation, 
except  one  individual — another  Gwin,  said  to  be  a  kinsman  of  the  new  register.  He  thought  it 
a  capital  hit;  and  at  a  dinner-party  in  Mississippi,  in  the  blasphemous  exuberance  of  family  grati¬ 
tude,  gave  the  following  toast :  “  Jackson ,  as  near  as  can  be,  a  fac  simile  of  the  Rock  of  Ages. 

Those  who  place  their  confidence  in  him  cannot  fail.” 

A  case  scarcely  less  memorable  than  Gwin’s  is  exhibited  in  the  history  of  the  mission  to  Eng¬ 
land.  The  Senate  refused  to  confirm  Mr.  Van  Buren’s  nomination  as  Minister,  because,  when 
Secretary  of  State,  he  had  begged  pardon  of  the  King  of  England  for  the  conduct  of  his  own  coun¬ 
try  about  the  colonial  trade.  The  President,  from  the  conjoined  motives  of  personal  pique  and 
party  policy,  refused  to  make  a  new  nomination  for  years,  and  then  nominated  the  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Representatives,  who  appointed  all  the  committees  of  that  House,  having  in  his  pocket 
the  promise  of  the  mission.  The  doctrine  of  the  relations  between  the  President  and  the  Speak¬ 
er  has  been  semi-officially  stated,  since  Mr.  Van  Buren’s  accession  to  the  Presidency,  to  be  as 
follows  : 

“  As  the  representative  of  the  majority  electing  him,  (the  Speaker,)  that  majority  is  made  re  ] 

“  sponsible  to  their  immediate  constituents,  and  when  that  majority  sustains  an  Administration, 

“  the  Executive  head ,  and  all  associated  with  him,  are  in  some  sort  held  answerable  to  the  na- 
“  tion  for  the  Speaker’s  selection  of  eminent  men  of  both  parties,  capable  and  willing  to  conduct 
“  the  closest  and  severest  scrutiny.” 

We  should  not  dismiss  this  topic  without  noticing  the  settled  practice  of  the  Executive  to  con¬ 
fer  offices  on  unsuccessful  candidates  for  the  favor  of  the  people.  This  abuse  of  the  appointing 
power  tempts  every  man  who  holds  a  trust  from  the  people  to  discharge  it  subserviently  to  the 
Executive,  by  assuring  him  that,  let  the  worst  come  to  the  worst,  let  the  people  reject  him  for 
violating  their  will,  the  President  will  take  care  of  him. 

The  Interference  of  Federal  Officers  in  Elections 

Is  assigned,  in  the  report,  as  a  cause  for  the  “alarm”  which  you  are  sounding, 
tamper  with  elections  have  ever  been  justly  regarded  as  vital  stabs  to  public  liberty, 
heaviest  charges  in  the  English  Bill  of  Rights  against  James  II,  was  his  “  violating 
of  election  of  members  to  seats  in  Parliament.” 


Attempts  to 
One  of  the 
the  freedom 


t 


21 


Mr.  Jefferson,  before  he  was  President,  expressed  his  opinion  on  this  subject  in  the  following 
words  : 

y  “  One  thing  I  will  say,  that,  as  to  the  future,  interferences  with  elections ,  whether  of  the 

“  State  or  General  Governments,  by  officers  of  the  latter,  should  be  deemed  cause  “  of  removal  ,* 
“  because  the  constitutional  remedy  by  the  elective  principle  becomes  nothing,  if  it  may  be 
“  smothered  by  the  enormous  patronage  of  the  General  Government.” 

Shortly  after  his  election  to  the  Presidency,  he  manifested  his  determination  to  conform  his 
practice  to  his  theory,  by  causing  the  several  heads  of  departments  to  issue  a  circular,  which  says: 

“The  President  of  the  United  States  has  seen,  with  dissatisfaction,  officers  of  the  General 
“  Government  taking,  on  various  occasions,  active  parts  in  elections  of  public  functionaries* 
“  whether  of  the  General  or  the  State  Governments.  Freedom  of  elections  being  essential  to 
“  the  mutual  independence  of  Governments,  and  of  the  different  branches  of  the  same  Govern- 
“  ment,  so  vitally  cherished  by  most  of  our  constitutions,  it  is  deemed  improper  for  officers  de- 
“  pending  on  the  Executive  of  the  Union  to  attempt  to  control  or  influence  the  free  exercise  of 
“  the  elective  right.  This  I  am  instructed,  therefore,  to  notify  to  all  officers  within  my  Depart- 
“  ment,  holding  their  appointments  under  the  authority  of  the  President  directly,  and  to  desire 
“  them  to  notify  to  all  subordinate  to  them.  The  right  of  any  officer  to  give  his  vote  at  elec- 
“  tions  as  a  qualified  citizen,  is  not  meant  to  be  restrained,  nor,  however,  given,  shall  it  have 
“  any  effect  to  his  prejudice;  but  it  is  expected  that  he  will  not  attempt  to  influence  the  votes  of 
“  others,  nor  take  any  part  in  the  business  of  electioneering,  that  being  deemed  inconsistent 
“  with  the  spirit  of  the  Constitution,  and  his  duties  to  it.” 

.  President  Jackson,  who  claimed  to  be  a  “  second  Jefferson,”  in  his  inaugural  address,  said : 

“  The  recent  demonstration  of  public  sentiments  inscribes  on  the  list  of  Executive  duties,  in 
“  characters  too  legible  to  be  overlooked,  the  task  of  reform  ;  which  will  require, particularly ,  the 
“  correction  of  those  abuses  that  have  brought  the  potronage  of  the  Federal  Government  into 
“  conflict  with  the  freedom  of  elections,  and  the  counteraction  of  those  causes  which  have  dis- 
“  turbed  the  rightful  course  of  appointment,  and  have  placed,  or  continued,  power  in  unfaithful 
“  or  incompetent  hands.” 

You  all  know  that  this  passage  is  a  slander  on  Mr.  Adams,  for  which,  in  an  analogous  case 
between  private  persons,  a  jury  would  have  given  vindictive  damages.  But  we  are  not  now 
concerned  with  this  aspect  of  it.  You  have  already  seen  whether  or  not  Presidents  Jackson  and 
t  Van  Buren  have  pursued  a  “rightful  course  of  appointment,”  and  you  feel  into  what  sort  of 

“  hands”  they  have  “  placed  or  continued  power.”  We  have  now  only  to  do  with  the  denuncia¬ 
tion  of  abuses  bringing  the  “ patronage  af  the  Federal  Government  into  conflict  with  the  freedom 
of  elections.”  President  Jackson’s  practice  on  this  subject  was  in  tremendous  “conflict”  with, 
his  professions;  and  President  Van  Buren  has,  indeed,  been  an  instrument  to  carry  out  [his] 
principles  and  policy”  in  regard  to  it — “to  perfect  the  work  which  he  had  so  gloriously  begun.” 

If  any  thing  were  wanting  to  perfect  the  title  of  their  “  principles  and  policy”  to  public  abhor¬ 
rence,  it  would  be  found  in  their  dedication  of  the  patronage  of  the  Government  to  electioneering 
purposes.  Without  venturing  on  the  wide  field  of  the  country  at  large,  let  us  pluck  a  few 
flowers  in  the  garden — the  National  Metropolis — our  own  city.  And,  first,  for  the  Cabinet  “im¬ 
proper.”  When  Mr.  Amos  Kendall  received  the  appointment  of  Fourth  Auditor  as  his  share  of 
the  spoils,  he  issued  a  circular  discontinuing  some  newspapers  taken  at  the  office,  because  they 
did  not  “  assist”  him  “  in  settling  the  accounts  of  the  United  States  Navy.”  In  the  tone  of  a 
Cato,  he  said  : 

“  The  interest  of  the  country  demands  that  this  office  shall  be  filled  with  men  of  business,  and 
“  not  with  babbling  politicians.  Partisan  feelings  shall  notenter  here,  if  I  can  shut  them  out. 
“  To  others  belongs  the  whole  business  of  electioneering;  to  me  and  my  clerks  other  duties  are 
“  assigned.  Them  I  shall  endeavor  to  discharge  in  the  spirit  of  reform,  which  has  made  Gen- 
“  eral  Jackson  President.  *  Vain’  I  may  be,  proud  I  am,  that  the  President  has  given  me  an 
“  opportunity  to  aid  him  in  proving  that  reform  is  not  an  empty  sound,  and  is  not  to  apply 
“  merely  to  a  change  of  men.” 

Circumstances  soon  threw  suspicion  on  these  patriotic  declarations;  but  the  “hireling,”  as  he 
properly  calls  himself,  was  not  unearthed  till  1832.  Then  we  find  a  letter  from  this  same  Mr. 
Kendall  to  a  correspondent  in  Kentucky,  of  which  the  following  is  an  extract : 

“  Dear  Sir  :  I  take  the  liberty  to  enclose  you  certain  proposals,  which  speak  for  themselves. 
“  The  people  need  only  correct  information,  and  the  proposed  paper  will  give  it  on  the  cheapest 
“  terms.  It  is  intended  to  reach  every  neighborhood  in  the  Union,  and  it  is  particularly  de- 
“  sirable  that  it  should  be  circulated  through  Kentucky.  It  will  render  essential  service  in  all 
“  your  elections.  Will  you  take  the  trouble,  for  the  sake  of  our  good  cause,  to  raise  a  sub- 
“  scription  in  your  quarter,  and  make  a  speedy  return  of  names  and  money  I  The  time  for 
“  action  is  at  hand,” 

About  the  same  time,  Elijah  Haywood,  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office,  thus  writ 
to  a  correspondent  in  Ohio  : 


7 


22 


i 


“Sin  :  I  send  you  the  second  number  of  the  Extra  Globe.  It  is  one  dollar  for  thirty  num- 
“  bers.  As  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  in  the  approaching  contest  for  the  Presidency 
“  that  this  paper  should  be  circulated  and  read  in  every  neighborhood  in  Ohio ,  can  you  procure 
“  five  or  ten  subscribers  for  it  in  your  vicinity  1  If  you  can,  and  do,  3^011  may  transmit  the 
“  money  to  me,  and  I  will  see  the  papers  forwarded  to  such  persons  and  post  offices  as  you  shall 
“  direct.  The  back  numbers  will  be  sent.” 

President  Jackson  had,  the  year  before,  given  Mr.  Kendall  to  understand  that  the  sort  of  “  aid” 
he  wanted  was  not  an  “empty  sound,”  by  franking  letters  himself,  of  which  the  object  was  to 
promote  his  nomination  to  the  Presidency  for  a  second  term — bitterly  hostile  as  he  was  to  bring¬ 
ing  “  the  patronage  of  the  Federal  Government  into  conflict  with  the  freedom  of  elections;  and 
though  his  language,  in  his  first  message  to  Congress,  was  that  the  Constitution  ought  to  be 
amended  so  as  “  to  limit  the  service  of  the  Chief  Magistrate  to  a  single  term.”  The  instance  men¬ 
tioned  in  the  report  shows  that  President  Jackson’s  example  of  electioneering  for  himself  wasim- 
«  itated,  and  that  his  “principles  and  policy,”  in  this  respect,  were  “carried  out”  by  his  succes¬ 
sor — his  Augustulus  in  the  empire. 

President  Jackson’s  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Cass,  electioneered  on  a  new  plan.  He  became  an 
elaborate  newspaper  assailant  of  the  opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  Worcester’s  case — the  law, 
as  laid  down  by  the  court,  not  suiting  the  Georgia  elections. 

President  Van  Buren’s  Cabinet  appears  to  have  been,  so  far  as  electioneering  is  concerned,  as 
much  of  a  “unit”  as  President  Jackson’s  was.  You  have  seen  Mr.  Poinsett,  the  Secretary  of 
War,  inflamed  by  a  generous  rivalry  of  his  predecessor,  Mr.  Cass,  directly  attempting,  by  letters 
missive,  to  prevent  the  re-election  to  Congress  of  Mr.  Legare,  who,  in  performing,  with  charac¬ 
teristic  firmness  and  ability,  his  duty  to  the  people,  had  sinned,  beyond  forgiveness,  against  the 
Administration.  You  recollect  Mr.  Attorney  General  Butler’s  letter  addressed  to  Mr.  Hugh  A. 

•  Garland.  The  object  of  this  performance  was  to  convince  the  people  of  Virginia,  that  though 

Mr.  Van  Buren  had  confessedly  electioneered  to  prevent  the  re-election  of  James  Madison  to 
the  Presidency,  yet  Mr.  Van  Buren  was  nevertheless  the  good  friend,  admirer,  and  even  support¬ 
er  of  Mr.  Madison!  Mr.  Butler  was  succeeded,  as  Attorney  General,  by  Mr.  Grundy,  who 
took  up  the  same  subject  as  among  the  unfinished  business  of  the  office ;  thinking,  perhaps,  that 
“  Mr.  Butler  had  not  examined  the  case  with  his  usual  care.”  Mr.  Grundy  took  more  pains 
with  it ;  for  he  writ  an  epistle  to  Mr.  A.  O.  P.  Nicholson,  which  fills  nine  columns  of  the  Globe. 
When  this  document  appeared,  “  the  first  idea  that  struck  you,”  fellow-citizens,  probably  was,, 
that  Mr.  Grundy  had  said  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  “  when  I  see  an  office-holder  in- 
“  terfering  in  elections ,  the  first  idea  that  strikes  me  is,  that  he  is  thinking  of  his  office 
“amd  his  bread  ;  and  therefore  an  unfit  adviser  of  those  whose  only  object  is  “  the  public 
good.”  The  next  idea  that  struck  you  was,  perhaps,  the  no  less  impressive  speech  of 
Mr.  Senator  Buchanan,  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Representatives:  “  Does  not,”  he  asked 
“  the  gentleman  know  that  when  a  man  is  once  appointed  to  office,  all  the  selfish  passions  of  his 
nature  are  enlisted  for  the  purpose  of  retaining  it?  The  office-holders  are  the  enlisted  sol¬ 

diers  of  the  administration  by  which  they  are  sustained.”  The  honorable  Senator  is,  undoubt¬ 
edly,  the  very  best  authority  as  to  one,  at  least,  of  these  “enlisted  soldiers.”  Another  of  them 
you  have  seen  inviting  the  public  by  advertisement  in  the  official  journal  of  the  Government,  to 

-  come  to  his  office,  at  the  Treasury  Department,  and  receive  electioneering  pamphlets.* 

I  partly  promised  not  to  go  out  of  the  limits  of  the  city  of  Washington  for  illustrations  of  this 
topic.  But  with  your  permission  I  will  refer  you  to  some  significant  transactions  in  another 
city.  It  was  proved,  on  oath,  before  the  last  Investigating  Committee,  that  the  officers  of  the 
customs  at  New  York  were  taxed,  according  to  the  amount  of  their  respective  salaries,  by  the 
•general  committee  of  the  Administration  party,  for  electioneering  purposes;  that  the  collector  of 
this  committee  kept  a  register  of  the  persons  taxed,  and  the  amount  assessed  on  each  individual;, 

*  See  T.  Hampton’s  advertisement,  Washington  Globe,  August 5,  [6]  1839. 

The  original  of  the  subjoined  letter,  from  the  Commissioner  of  the  Patent  Office  may  be  seen  at  the  office  of  the 
Madisonian.  It  is,  with  the  exception  of  the  signature,  lithographed;  so  that  each  federal  officer  at  the  seat  of 
Government  has  only  to  sign  and  frank  letters  already  prepared  for  him,  and  circulate  them,  with  specimen  num¬ 
bers  of  “  the  Extra  Globe,”  all  over  the  country. 

Washington  City,  January  31, 1838. 

Sir  :  I  enclose  you  herewith  a  Prospectus  for  the  Extra  Globe,  with  the  first  number  as  a  sample.  These  papers 
"will  explain  themselves.  The  cheap  rate  at  which  the  Extra  Globe  will  be  published,  will  enable  every  man  in 
the  country  to  become  a  subscriber.  For  a  single  dollar  he  can  obtain  a  weekly  newspaper,  published  at  the  seat 
of  the  national  Government,  containing  the  latest  political  and  foreign  news.  If  a  number  of  persons  choose  to  unite 

*  Rud  forward  a  larger  sum,  the  subscription  to  each,  as  you  will  perceive  by  the  terms  of  the  Prospectus,  will  beles3 
than  a  dollar.  Whilst  our  political  opponents  control  a  majority  of  the  public  presses  in  every  State,  it  is  believed 
in  the  Union,  and  have  in  their  employ  a  corps  of  letter  writers  stationed  in  this  city  and  elsewhere,  who  are  daily 
misrepresenting  public  men  and  public  measures,  it  becomes  important,  to  counteract  their  effect,  that  a 
cheap  medium,  through  which  true  information  may  be  conveyed  to  the  people,  should  be  patronised.  The  Globe, 
it  is  well  known,  is  the  leading  Democratice  paper ;  and  because  it  is  so,  great  efforts  have  been  made  by  the  federal 
party  to  impair  its  just  influence  on  public  opinion.  They  have  not  succeeded. 

Let  me  hope  that  you  will  take  some  interest  in  giving  to  the  Extra  Globe  an  extensive  circulation  in  your 
neighborhoood. 

I  am,  very  respectfully,  your  obedient  servant, 

H.  L.  ELLSWORTH. 


A 


23 


that  if  the  individual  assessed  declined  to  pay  the  tax,  he  was  reported  to  the  committee  for  dis¬ 
missal  from  office  ;  that  the  collector  of  the  port  was  a  court  of  appeals  to  correct  any  errors  in 
the  assessment;  that  the  tax  on  one  class  of  officers  was  collected  by  the  deputy  surveyor  of  the 
port;  and  that,  on  a  particular  occasion,  when  a  weigher  objected  to  paying  the  tax,  the  deputy 
surveyor  extorted  it  from  him  by  threatening  his  removal.  This  was  the  affirmative  proof.  The 
negative  evidence  was  yet  more  powerful;  as  you  will  perceive  on  examining  the  testimony  of 
Vanderpoel  and  Becker.  The  last  witness  was  one  of  the  “Tammany  Hall”  collectors  of  the 
tariff  on  office-holders.  Thirty-five  interrogatories  were  put  to  him,  some  of  which  he  answered, 
and  others  he  “respectfully  declined”  to  answer;  acting,  as  he  said,  under  the  advice  of  his  law¬ 
yer,  “  Mr.  Jesse  Oakly,”  and  under  an  obligation  of  secrecy,  which  the  “finance  committee” 
had  imposed  on  their  collectors.  If  you  take  the  trouble  to  collate  the  questions  to  Becker,  his 
answers,  and  his  refusals  to  answer,  you  will  find  that  he  makes  out  a  case  even  stronger  than 
that  proved  by  the  other  witnesses.  With  all  his  caution  he  seftms  to  have  fallen  into  the  common 
error  of  clients,  that  of  only  half  stating  his  case  to  his  lawyer.  He  testified  that  A.  B.  Vander¬ 
poel,  a  custom-house  officer,  had  been  a  member  of  the  “  General  Democratic  Republican  Com¬ 
mittee,”  or  of  the  “  finance  committee”  thereof.  He  was  then  asked,  “  Were  any  other  officers 
of  the  custom-house  members  of  either  of  the  said  committees  during  the  past  four  years'!”  He 
answered,  as  surely  he  would  not  have  answered  under  advisement,  “  Yes  ;  but  they  were  gen¬ 
erally  elected  previous  to  their  appointment  in  the  custom-house .”  The  bearing  of  such  an  an¬ 
swer  on  the  general  belief  that  partisan  activity  was  recognised  by  President  Van  Buren  as  a  title 
to  office,  is  so  obvious,  that  “  Mr.  Jesse  Oakly,”  had  he  been  at  the  witness’s  elbow,  must  have 
advised  him  to  “respectfully  decline  answering.” 

The  corruption  exposed  by  this  evidence  existed  in  the  very  branch  of  the  public  service,  and 
in  the  very  city,  which  had  attracted  the  special  attention  of  Mr.  Van  Buren  and  others,  who 
made  the  report,  to  the  Senate,  in  1826,  on  Executive  patronage.  In  that  document  they  exem¬ 
plified  the  vastness  and  the  dangers  of  Federal  patronage,  by  reference  “  to  a  work  of  unques¬ 
tionable  authority  upon  this  subject,  the  Blue  Booh  of  the  Republic,  which  corresponds  with  the 
Red  Book  of  monarchies,”  and  read  several  passages  of  “that  growing  little  volume,”  contain¬ 
ing  a  list  of  the  names  and  salaries  of  the  custom-house  officers  in  New  York.  Then  these  pa¬ 
triots  broke  out  in  the  following  strain  of  holy  horror: 

“  A  formidable  list,  indeed  ! — formidable  in  numbers,  and  still  more  so  from  the  vast  amount 
“  of  money  in  their  hands.  The  action  of  such  a  body  of  men,  supposing  them  to  be  animated 
“  by  one  spirit, must  be  tremendous  in  an  election',  and  that  they  will  be  so  animated  is  a  prop- 
“  osition  too  plain  to  need  demonstration.  Power  over  a  man's  support  has  always  been  held 
i  “  and  admitted  to  be  power  over  his  wll.  The  President  has  ‘power’  over  the  ‘  support’  of  all 

“  these  officers,  and  they  again  have  power  over  the  support  of  debtor  merchants  to  the  amount 
“  of  ten  millions  of  dollars  per  annum,  and  over  the  daily  support  of  an  immense  number  of  indi- 
•  “  viduals,  professional,  mechanical,  and  day-laboring,  to  whom  they  can  and  will  extend  or  deny 

“  a  valuable  private  as  well  as  public  patronage,  according  to  the  part  they  shall  act  in  State  as 
“  wrell  as  in  Federal  elections.  Still,  this  is  only  a  branch,  a  mere  prong,  of  Federal  patronage 
“  in  the  city  of  New  York.” 

At  that  time,  the  number  of  the  officers  enumerated  wras  174,  and  the  amount  of  their  salaries 
$119,620  39.  It  has  been  computed  that  their  number  is  at  present  497,  and  the  amount  of 
their  salaries  $555,615  92  ;  the  average  yearly  addition  of  officers  being  23,  and  the  average  year¬ 
ly  increase  of  compensation  being  $31,142  52  !  And  “this  is  only  a  branch,  a  mere  prong ,  of 
Federal  patronage.”  The  “  Blue  Book”  of  the  Republic,  corresponding  with  the  Red  Book 
“  of  Monarchies ,”  is  indeed  “  a  growing  little  volume  !”  At  the  time  of  Mr.  Van  Buren’s  re¬ 
port,  it  contained  280  pages.  The  last  volume  has  grown  to  500  pages !  The  evidence  in  the 
report  of  the  Investigating  Committee  shows  that  the  New  York  custom-house  officers  are  “  an¬ 
imated  by  one  spirit,”  and  through  an  instrumentality  which  even  the  pious  reformers  of  1826 
did  not  dream  of — a  tariff  on  salaries! 

Before  the  exposure  made  by  the  committee,  it  had  been  a  matter  of  general  belief,  and  it  was 
so  charged,  that  the  salaries  of  office-holders  wrnre  taxed,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  carry  on  the 
electioneering  business  of  the  Administration.  But  the  charge,  though  founded  on  good  evi¬ 
dence,  was  denied  to  be  true.  The  report  made  further  denial  vain.  The  fact  was  proved. 
All  that  remained  to  be  done  then  was  to  admit,  and,  if  possible,  excuse  it.  This  hazardous 
service  was  imposed  on  the  Hon.  Garret  D.  Wall,  chairman  of  the  Judiciary  Committe  in 
the  Senate.  He  accordingly  set  to  work,  and  rather  overdid  his  task.  He  produced  a  report, 
already  referred  tc>,  of  wdiich  the  aim  was  not  to  excuse  merely,  but  to  justify  the  interference  of 
Federal  officers  in  elections.  Nay,  that  remarkable  document  denounced  all  who  might  omit  so 
to  interfere,  as  eunuchs,  mutes,  outlaws,  outcasts,  lepers,  slaves,  aliens,  &c.,  as  being  worse 
even  than  “  corporations  of  associated  wealth .”  These  were  significant  hints,  fellow-citizens, 
from  an  Administration  leader  to  the  “  enlisted  soldiers.”  Deeply  as  the  heart  of  every  patriot 
must  have  been  grieved  by  the  promulgation  of  so  atrocious  a  paper  in  the  form  of  a  public  doc¬ 
ument,  emanating  from  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  he  was  not  without  consolation.  I  pray 


24 


every  one  of  you  who  has  not  read,  to  delay  no  longer  to  read,  the  reply  of  Senator  Rives  ;  a  re¬ 
ply  which,  for  lo^ic,  eloquence,  and  patriotism,  is  worthy  of  the  best  days  of  Virginia.  There 
is  another  pleasing  incident  in  the  history  of  the  report.  If  the  sighs  of  the  times  are  to  be  re¬ 
lied  on,  it  will  have  its  full  share  in  the  overthrow  of  the  present  dynasty.  The  American  peo¬ 
ple  can  never  stand  the  avowals  of  that  paper.  After  all,  these  avowals  are  not,  perhaps,  to  be 
wondered  at,  strongly  as  they  must  be  detested.  The  author  is  known  to  be  a  Jackson-Van 
Burenized  ultraist  o  f  the  old  Federal  school ;  and  this  is  said  by  the  curious  in  natural  history  to 
he  the  most  rabid  cross  in  the  whole  genus  of  the  political  mule. 

I  come  now  to  the  part  of  the  report  which  notices  the 

AnTI-CoNSTITUTIONAL  DOCTRINES  ANI)  PRACTICES 
of  the  last  and  present  Administrations. 

The  catalogue  is  imperfect,  and  the  theme  is  boundless.  I  shall  take  up  a  few  heads  only. 

In  his  bank  veto,  in  1832,  President  Jackson  announced  the  following  proposition  : 

“Each  public  officer  who  takes  an  oath  to  support  the  Constitution,  swears 
“  that  he  will  support  it  as  he  understands  it,  and  not  as  it  is  understood  by  others. 
“  It  is  as  much  the  duty  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  of  the  Senate,  and  of  the  President, 
“  to  decide  upon  the  constitutionality  of  any  bill  or  resolution  which  may  be  presented  to  them 
“  for  passage  or  approval,  as  it  is  of  the  supreme  judges  when  it  may  be  brought  before  them  for 
“judicial  decision.” 

This  doctrine,  worthy  of  the  wildest  moments  of  the  French  revolution,  was  received  by  our 
sober,  thinking,  American  people,  with  the  contempt  which  it  deserved.  They  saw  and  felt 
that  no  community  in  which  it  might  be  acted  on  generally,  could  last  for  a  single  day ;  and  that 
the  necessity  of  some  authority,  universally  accredited,  for  expounding  the  laws,  was  radicated 
in  the  very  nature  of  the  social  system.  They  had,  on  full  consideration,  delegated  this  power 
to  the  Judiciary — the  department  of  their  Government  best  fitted,  by  education  and  habit,  to 
exercise  it  properly,  and,  from  the  same  causes,  as  well  as  from  relative  weakness,  in  compari¬ 
son  with  the  other  departments,  least  capable  of  abusing  it.  The  circumstances  in  which  the 
transfer  of  the  power  was  attempted  were  not  calculated  to  reconcile  them  to  the  usurpation. 
John  Marshall  was  the  head  of  the  Judicary,  and  Andrew  Jackson  was  the  head  of  the  Ex¬ 
ecutive  branch  of  the  Government. 

The  doctrine,  connected  with  subsequent  pretensions,  amounted  to  a  claim  that  every  public 
officer  should  obey  the  Constitution  as  the  President  might  choose  to  understand  it;  for,  in  the 
protest  of  1834,  he  says  : 

“  Among  the  duties  imposed  in  him,  and  which  he  is  sworn  to  perform,  is  that  of  *  taking 
“  care  that  the  laws  be  faithfully  executed.’  Being  thus  made  responsible  for  the  entire  action 
“  of  the  Executive  Department ,  it  was  but  reasonable  that  the  power  of  appointing,  overseeing, 
“  and  controlling  those  who  execute  the  laws — a  power  in  its  nature  executive — should  remain 
“  in  him.” 

And  again,  in  the  same  paper  : 

“The  whole  Executive  power  being  vested  in  the  President,  who  is  responsible  for  its  exer- 
“  cise,  it  is  a  necessary  consequence  that  he  should  have  a  right  to  employ  agents  of  his  own 
“  choice  to  aid  him  in  the  performance  of  his  duties,  and  to  discharge  them  when  he  is  no 
“  longer  willing  to  be  responsible  for  their  acts .” 

You  see  at  once,  fellow-citizens,  that  the  English  of  all  this  is,  that  when  any  executive  officer 
acts  on  an  understanding,  different  from  the  President’s,  of  the  Constitution,  the  President  is 
bound  by  his  oath  of  office  to  “  discharge”  the  officer. 

An  appropriate  illustration  of  this  doctrine  appears  in  the  report  of  the  last  Investigating  Com¬ 
mittee.  A  practice  had  grown  up  in  the  city  of  New  York,  which  is  thus  described  by  Mr.  Sec¬ 
retary  Woodbury: 

“It  frequently  happens,  especially  at  the  larger  ports  of  entry,  on  the  importation  of  some 
“  particular  description  of  goods,  that  the  importer  disputes  the  duty  to  which  the  collector  (act- 
“  ing  under  the  instructions  of  the  Comptroller)  decides  the  articles  in  question  to  be  liable  un- 
“  der  the  tariff  law;  but,  with  the  view  of  getting  possession  of  his  goods,  the  importer  pays, 
“  under  protest,  the  amount  of  duty  demanded  by  the  collector,  and,  at  the  same  time,  gives 
“  that  officer  notice  not  to  pay  the  money  over  to  the  Government,  and  immediately  institutes  a 
“  suit  against  the  collector  to  recover  back  the  amount  so  paid.” 

Jesse  Hoyt,  the  present  collector  at  New  York,  frequently  held  large  sums  of  money  thus  paid 
under  “protest.”  At  one  time,  by  his  own  admission,  they  amounted  to  $124,000/  “It  is,” 
he  writ  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  “very  apparent  we  cannot  get  on,  and  execute  the 
laws  as  we  understand  them.”  The  moneys  thus  received  under  “  protest”  he  deposited  to  his 
own  private  credit,  instead  of  depositing  them  to  the  credit  of  the  Treasurer  of  the  United  States. 
He  made  the  same  disposition  of  moneys  received  in  payment  for  “unascertained  duties” — re¬ 
ceipts  which  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  thus  explains: 


25 


“On  an  importation  of  goods  liable  to  cash  duties,  some  time  unavoidably  must  elapse  before 
“  the  duties  thereon  can  be  calculated,  and  the  exact  amount  payable  ascertained.  It  appears  to 
“  be  the  practice  in  such  cases  to  receive  from  the  importer  a  sum  of  money  deemed  sufficient  to 
V  “  cover  the  amount  when  ascertained,  and  any  deficiency  is  afterwards  made  up,  or  the  surplus 
“  refunded  by  the  collector,  as  the  case  may  be.  These  funds  the  collector  designates  as  money 
*“  taken  and  held  for  unascertained  duties.” 

The  payments  made  under  “protest,”  and  for  “unascertained  duties,”  being  public  moneys, 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  required — no  “  would  suggest  to” — the  collector  to  deposite  them 
to  the  credit  of  the  Treasurer  of  the  United  States.  But  Mr.  Hoyt  preferred  to  “support”  the 
law  “as  he  understood  it,”  and  held  on  to  the  money.  A  protracted  correspondence  ensued. 
The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  betook  himself  to  the  Attorney  General,  and  requested  his  official 
opinion  on  the  subject.  This  was  a  trying  moment  to  the  “appointed  orator  of  the  Constitu¬ 
tion,”  for  the  collector  at  New  York  was,  of  course,  “one  of  the  main  pillars  of  the  democratic 
>cause.”  But  Mr.  Grundy  stood  fire;  and,  as  you  never  before  had,  and  may  not  have  again, 
reason  to  applaud  him  for  firmness,  you  will  the  more  cheerfully  do  justice  to  his  conduct  on  the 
occasion  referred  to.  He  decided  that  the  collector  had  no  “  legal  right  to  retain  the  money’ !j 
received  under  “ protest  in  his  own  hands  beyond  the  control  of  the  Department,”  &c.,  and 
that  he  ought  “to  pay  over  to  the  Treasury  all  moneys  received  by  him  under  such  circum¬ 
stances.”  It  is  true  that, 

“  Scared  at  the  sound  himself  had  made,” 

lie  subsides,  in  the  next  paragraph,  into  a  mere  impression  that  “the  law  never  intended  that 
money  collected  for  public  purposes  should  be  held  by  individuals,”  &c.  But  he  rallies  again, 
and  marches  through  the  “  unascertained  duties ”  like  a  hero. 

“  It  could  never  (he  says)  have  been  the  intention  of  Congress  that  a  collector  should  receive 
“  money  for  duties  under  a  private  arrangement  with  the  importer,  and  keep  the  money  in  his 
“  hands  until  it  was  convenient  for  him  to  4 cause  the  amount  of  duties  to  be  ascertained.  If 
“  such  a  practice  were  tolerated,  it  might  be  the  interest  of  the  collector  to  postpone  the  ascer- 
ci  tainment  of  the  duties,  as,  in  the  meantime,  he  would  have  the  uncontrolled  use  of  the  mo- 
*“  ney.  It  would  also  increase  the  danger  of  faithlessness  in  the  collector,  by  permitting  large 
“  amounts  of  money  to  remain  with  him,  and  under  his  individual  control,  instead  of  being  in 
“  the  Treasury  of  the  United  States.  The  tenor  and  spirit  of  all  our  revenue  laws  seem  [seem! 
seem  only!  “oh,  Mr.  Grundy,  Mr.  Grundy,  oh!”]  to  inculcate  the  idea  that  the  intention  of 
>-  “  Congress  has  at  all  times  been,  that  money  collected  for  revenue  should  be  promptly  placed  in 

“  the  Treasury,  and  not  be  permitted  to  remain  in  the  hands  of  the  collector;  therefore,  in  any 
“  regulations  you  may  make  upon  this  subject,  that  object  should  be  constantly  kept  in  view.” 

Thus  far,  the  Attorney  General.  But  what  said  the  collector  1  Why,  this  :  “  The  reasoning 
.  of  the  Attorney  General  is  very  sound  on  both  points  as  to  what  the  law  should  be;”  and  “that 
the  law  ought  to  be  as  the  Attorney  General  seems  [<e  seems,”  again  !]  to  be  of  opinion  it  is, 
there  can  be  no  doubt.  But,”  &c.  &c.  In  short,  Mr.  Hoyt  understood  the  law  differently ; 
.and,  acting  on  his  understanding  of  it,  continued  to  keep  the  money. 

The  proposition,  of  which  Mr.  Hoyt’s  conduct  is  a  practical  illustration,  though  limited  in  its 
terms  to  Executive  officers,  cannot  be  rested  on  any  ground  which  would  make  it  true  as  to  them, 
and  not  true  to  as  to  every  body  else.  Apply  it  to  the  transactions  of  ordinary  life,  and  whither 
would  it  lead  you  1  One  individual  owes  another  a  debt,  and  the  creditor  brings  suit.  The 
marshal  or  sheriff,  to  whom  the  process  is  handed,  thinks  that  it  has  issued  under  an  unconstitu- 
tianal  law,  and  refuses  to  serve  it.  If  he  persist  in  the  refusal,  there  is  an  end  of  the  matter. 
Perhaps,  however,  on  “sober  second  thought,”  he  waives  his  objections,  and  consents  to  serve 
the  writ.  But  then  a  new  difficulty  arises.  The  debtor,  the  man  who  is  sued,  understands  the 
law  differently  from  both  creditor  and  sheriff.  He  thinks,  as  he  would  be  very  apt  to  think,  that 
the  law  is  unconstitutional ;  resists  the  officer,  and  “strikes  the  process  dead  in  his  hands”  by 
knocking  him  down.  This  is  the  natural  result  of  the  nullification  doctrine  of  the  arch  anti- 
nullifier.  * 

The  report  notices  President  Jackson’s  claims,  put  forward  in  his  Protest  in  1834,  to  be  “the 
direct  Representative  of  the  American  people.”  The  object  of  the  claim  was  to  justify 
his  seizure  of  the  money  of  the  American  people,  and  it  was  afterwards  kept  as  a  sort  of  cold- 
souse  argument  to  be  used  in  cases  for  which  no  other  apology  could  be  thought  of.  The  pre¬ 
tension  goes  far  ahead  of  the  English  doctrine,  from  which  it  appears  to  have  been  borrowed, 
though  with  a  less  accurate  understanding  of  the  model  than  might  have  been  expected  from  a 
Doctor  of  Laws.  Mr.  Burke  had  said,  seventy  years  ago,  “The  King  is  the  Representative  of 

*  Since  this  speech  was  delivered,  I  have  seen  in  the  Georgetown  Advocate  the  following  exemplification  of  the 
doctrine,  copied  from  the  New  Orleans  Picayune :  At  a  court  of  law  in  Texas,  “  a  dispute  as  to  the  disposition  of 
some  cause  arose  between  the  Judge  and  tlie  Clerk,  when  the  latter,  finding  that  his  legal  opinion  was  about  to  be 
disregarded,  thrust  ths  papers  into  the  stove,  saying,  ‘I  shall  abrogate  the  whole  proceedings  of  the  Court.’  The 
Judge  immediately  entered  a  demurrer,  in  the  shape  of  his  two  fists ;  the  Clerk  rejoined  in  a  similar  way,  and  their 
respective  friends  coming  to  their  assistance,  threw  the  temple  of  the  blind  goddess  into  a  state  of  the  utmost  con¬ 
fusion.” 


V 


26 


> 


the  people;”  but  he  added,  “so  are  the  Lords,  so  are  the  Judges.  They  are  all  trustees  for  the 
people,  as  well  as  the  Commons-”  According  to  the  improved  doctrine,  the  President  is  not 
only  the  King, and  a  “trustee,”  but  he  is  the  sole  trustee  for  the  people;  and  a  trustee,  too, 
with  the  novel  powers  of  breaking  the  trust,  and  of  doing  as  he  pleases  with  the  estate,  irrespon-  ' 

sible  to  any  body. 

The  abuse  of  the  veto  power  opens  a  field  for  comment  so  wide  that,  under  any  circumstan¬ 
ces,  I  should  hesitate  to  enter  it.  On  the  present  occasion,  I  can  only  ask  you  to  glance  at  it. 
Alexander  Hamilton,  who  has  been  represented  as  the  advocate  of  too  much  strength  in  the 
Executive,  described  the  veto  power  as  “a  shield  to  the  Executive  against  legislative  encroach¬ 
ment;”  as  “an  additional  security  against  the  enaction  of  improper  laws ;”  and  as  establishing 
“  a  salutary  check  upon  the  legislative  body,  calculated  to  guard  the  community  against  the  ef- 
“  fects  of  faction,  precipitancy,  or  of  any  impulse  unfriendly  to  the  public  good,  which  may 
“  happen  to  influence  a  majority  of  that  body.”  This  passage  is  from  the  Federalist,  (No.  73,) 
and  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  doctrine  not  of  Hamilton  only,  but  of  Madison  and  Jay  also. 

Mr.  Jefferson,  in  an  official  opinion  prepared  by  him  when  Secretary  of  State,  characterizes 
the  veto  power  as  “the  shield  provided  by  the  Constitution  to  protect  against  invasions  of  the 
“  Legislature  :  1st,  the  rights  of  the  Executive;  2d,  of  the  Judiciary  ;  3d  of  the  States  and  State 
“  Legislatures.”  When  President  Jackson  left  office,  it  was  thought  that  he  had  exhausted  the 
capacity  of  the  veto  power  for  abuse;  though  Mr.  Duane  had  not  then,  I  believe,  disclosed  the 
fact,  subsequently  stated  in  his  publication  of  1838,  that  it  was  a  part  of  the  President’s  plan  in 
seizing  the  public  money  to  veto  any  law  which  might  be  enacted  for  restoring  it.  But  Presi¬ 
dent  Van  Buren,  while  he  stands  ready  “to  carry  out”  the  “principles  and  policy”  of  his  “il¬ 
lustrious  predecessor”  in  regard  to  every  thing,  has  made  considerable  advances  towards  perfect¬ 
ing  “the  work  so  gloriously  begun,”  of  absorbing  in  the  veto  the  whole  legislative  power  of  the 
nation.  President  Jackson,  prodigal  and  odious  as  was  his  use  of  this  power,  had  applied  it 
only  to  bills  actually  passed.  President  Van  Buren  has  corrected  the  oversight,  by  repeatedly 
threatening  Congress  in  advance  with  the  veto. 

Another  cause  of  “alarm”  is  the  doctrine  and  practice  of  the  Executive  “to  strangle  con¬ 
gressional  investigations  of  public  abuses.”  You  remember  the  investigating  commit¬ 
tee  which,  in  January,  1837,  was  extorted  from  a  hostile  majority  in  the  House  of  Representa¬ 
tives,  after  many  a  baffled  effort,  by  Henry  A.  Wise — that  patriot,  whose  talents,  at  once  bril¬ 
liant  and  solid,  whose  capacity  for  labor  and  incapacity  for  fear,  have  acquired  for  him,  in  the  blos¬ 
som  of  his  youth,  the  fame  of  a  great  public  benefactor.  The  President  addressed  a  letter  to 
that  committee,  denouncing  the  debate  previous  to  its  appointment,  in  the  House  of  Represent¬ 
atives,  as  being  too  free  ;  denouncing  the  act  of  the  House,  raising  a  committee  to  inquire  into*  ( 
the  condition  of  the  Executive  Departments,  as  making  an  audacious  “issue”  with  him,  who; 
had  “alleged,  in  his  annual  message,  that”  they  w-ere  all  in  a  “prosperous  condition,”  and  con¬ 
ducted  with  “  ability”  and  “  integrity  ;”  characterizing  the  committee  as  a  “  Spanish  inquisition,” 
and  as  having  no  power  to  inquire  whether  or  not  abuses  existed,  because  they  had  made  no 
“specific  charges;”  describing  the  chairman  of  the  committee  and  his  “associates”  as  calumni¬ 
ators  ;  threatening  to  prohibit  the  Executive  officers  from  giving  evidence ;  and  showing  that  he 
had  used  one  of  the  members  of  the  committee  as  a  spy  and  informer  on  the  rest,  and  that  he 
assumed  to  supervise  and  control  their  proceedings. 

This  committee  had  been  yielded  by  the  majority,  partly  through  a  sense  of  shame,  and  partly 
through  a  hope  that,  being  appointed  almost  at  the  close  of  the  session,  it  would  not  have  time 
to  do  any  thing  :  but  it  was  appointed  against  the  influence  of  the  Administration.  It  was  a 
great  thing  for  the  friends  of  the  Constitution  to  get  any  chance  of  investigation.  But  it  was 
only  an  ovation,  not  a  triumph  ;  for  the  committee  was  packed  by  a  presidential  serf,  who  filled 
the  Speaker’s  chair,  and  who,  against  all  parliamentary  rule,  and  in  contempt  of  common  de¬ 
cency,  placed  on  the  committee  a  majority  who  were  unfriendly  to  its  object !  It  consisted  of 
nine  persons  ;  and  six — two-thirds — of  them  knew  it  was  their  business  to  think  it  a  “  Spanish  in¬ 
quisition,”  and  they  were  appointed  for  that  reason  !  The  bitterest  comment  on  this  proceeding 
which  I  can  conceive  of  is  to  refer  you  to  the  contrasted  conduct  of  the  present  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Representatives;  who,  though  he  may  sometimes,  in  aiming  to  keep  a  perfectly  straight 
position,  bend  a  little  backward,  always  shows  that  he  is  influenced  by  a  high  and  chaste  sense 
of  honor  and  justice. 

The  majority  on  the  committee  referred  to,  devoted  themselves  to  defeating  its  objects — to 
smothering  the  truth.  A  remarkable  instance  of  this  occurred  in  a  scrutiny  affecting  the  Post¬ 
master  General,  which  was  attempted.  The  charge  was,  that  a  company  had  been  formed  to  buy 
some  Indian  lands,  on  the  usual  “principles  and  policy”  of  such  companies;  that  the  consent  of 
the  President  being  necessary,  by  treaty  law,  to  the  sale,  Kendall  was  admitted  a  partner  in  the 
profits,  to  the  amount  of  fifty  thousand  dollars,  for  the  sole  consideration  of  his  influence  with 
the  President  in  obtaining  authority  for  the  sale ;  and  that  the  lands  were  purchased  by  the  com¬ 
pany.  Here  was  a  “specific  charge.”  A  witness  testified:  “ I  have  no  information  of  any 
“  persons  interested  at  this  time  with  Mr.  Kendall  in  the  profits  of  buying  and  selling’public 
“  lands.”  A  question  was  then  asked,  “Have  you  any  information  of  persons  who  have  been 


27 


“  interested  with  Mr.  Kendall,  since  he  has  been  an  executive  officer,  in  the  profits  of  buying 
“  and  selling  the  public  lands!”  The  question  was  objected  to,  and  voted  down  by  the  major- 
ity !  The  same  game  was  played  when  an  investigation  was  attempted  into  Kendall’s  connex¬ 
ion  with  the  Globe  newspaper.  Well  and  faithfully  did  the  majority  perform  the  service  ex¬ 
pected  from  them — that  of  “  strangling”  investigation  !  And  so  successful  were  their  labors, 
that  the  people  called  the  committee  “The  Committee  of  Concealment;”  and  yet  the  minority 
elicited  enough  to  startle  the  whole  nation.  The  obsequious  majority  were  not  forgotten  by 
President  Van  Buren.  Four  out  of  the  six  have  already  got  office.  Of  the  fifth,  the  services, 
though  sincere,  seem  to  have  been  too  trivial  for  recompense.  As  to  the  sixth,  the  Administra¬ 
tion  shrunk,  perhaps,  from  adding  to  their  previous  outrages  on  the  moral  sense  of  the  country,  by 
openly  rewarding  him ;  and  his  political  circumstances  relieved  them  from  any  dread  of  his  re¬ 
sentment  at  being  neglected. 

The  peculation  letter  of  March,  1838,  from  the  Treasury,  came  on — the  famous  Document 
No.  297 ;  and  then,  in  December,  the  Swartwout  disclosures.  Inquiry  could  no  longer  be  re¬ 
pelled  ;  and  the  Executive  failed  in  his  death-struggle  to  pack  another  investigating  committee. 
The  House  of  Representatives  refused  to  trust  Mr.  Speaker  Polk  again,  and  determined  to  elect 
the  committee  themselves.  The  next  attempt  was,  that  the  committee  should  be  chosen  from 
the  opposition  ranks  exclusively;  in  which  case,  when  they  should  present  a  report,  it  was  to  be 
decried  as  a  one-sided  partisan  paper.  So  far  was  the  policy  of  intimidation  carried,  that  Mr. 
Ely  Moore,  then  a  Representative  from  the  city  of  New  York,  and  now  surveyor  of  that  port , 
proclaimed,  on  the  floor  of  the  House,  any  “democrat”  who  would  serve  on  the  commitee  as  a 
“ traitor ”  and  a  “  conspirator .”  But  Administration  gentlemen  were  found  whom  the  threats 
of  faction  could  not  frighten  from  a  public  duty ;  and  a  committee  was  finally  elected,  constituted 
on  proper  parliamentary  principles,  and  above  personal  exception  in  any  instance.  In  the  pro¬ 
gress  of  their  labors,  they  were  met  by  efforts  on  the  part  of  witnesses  “to  strangle  investiga¬ 
tion,”  of  w  hich  the  example  had  been  furnished  from  head  quarters. 

No  feature  of  the  present  administrative  system  is  more  hideous  than  its  hostility  to  the 
judiciaht.  Our  countrymen  boast  that  their  Government  is  emphatically  a  Government  of  laws ; 
that  the  temples  of  justice  are  the  citadels  of  their  liberties.  To  the  manifold  assaults  of  President 
Jackson  on  the  Judiciary,  I  cannot  further  advert,  except  to  remind  you  of  his  usurpation  of  the 
right  of  the  Judiciary  to  expound  the  laws.  In  the  plan  of  bringing  “the  Judiciary  into  public  odi¬ 
um  and  contempt,”  President  Van  Buren  has  been  particularly  zealous  “to  carry  out”  the  “prin¬ 
ciples  and  policy”  of  his  “  venerated  chief” — “to  perfect  the  work  which  he  had  so  gloriouly  be¬ 
gun.”  The  report  notices  his  sanction  of  the  conduct  of  the  Postmaster  General  in  disobeying 
\  a  law  of  the  land,  and  trampling  the  courts  of  justice  under  his  “hireling”  feet.  In  a  coun¬ 

try,  and  with  a  Government  like  ours,  this  is  perhaps  a  more  momentous  subject  than  any  other 
in  the  paper  before  you.  But  I  forbear  to  do  more  than  to  call  your  attention  to  the  language  of 
the  Supreme  Court,  in  the  case  of  Kendall  against  the  United  States. 

“  It  w7as,”  said  that  august  tribunal,  “  urged  at  the  bar  that  the  Postmaster  General  w7as  alone 
“  subject  to  the  direction  and  control  of  the  President  with  respect  to  the  execution  of  the  duty 
“  imposed  on  him  by  this  law  ;  and  this  right  of  the  President  is  claimed  as  growing  out  of  the 
“  obligation  imposed  upon  him  by  the  Constitution ,  to  take  care  that  the  laws  be  faithfully 
“  executed.  This  is  a  doctrine  that  cannot  receive  the  sanction  of  this  court.  It  would  be  vest- 
“  ing  in  the  President  a  dispensing  power,  which  has  no  countenance  for  its  support  in  any 
“  part  of  the  Constitution;  and  is  asserting  a  principle  which,  if  carried  out  in  its  results  to  all 
“  cases  falling  within  it,  would  be  clothing  the  President  with  a  powTer  entirely  to  control  the  legis- 
“  lation  of  Congress,  and  paralyze  the  administration  of  justice. 

“  To  contend  that  the  obligation  imposed  on  the  President  to  see  the  laws  faithfully  executed, 
“  implies  a  powrer  to  forbid  their  execution,  is  a  novel  construction  of  the  Constitution,  and  en- 
“  tireiy  inadmissible.” 

A  dispensing  power  claimed  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  for  the  Chief  Magistrate  of  a 
Republic  !  A  power,  of  which  the  claim  by  a  British  monarch,  a  century  and  a  half  ago, 
cost  him  his  throne.  Look  in  Belsham’s  History  at  the  Bill  of  Rights  of  1689.  The  very  first 
declarations  of  that  celebrated  paper  are  : 

“That  the  pi'etended  power  of  suspending  laws,  or  the  execution  of  laws,  by  regal  authority, 
“  without  consent  of  Parliament,  is  illegal : 

“  That  the  pretended  power  of  dispensing  with  laws ,  or  the  executing  of  laws,  by  regal  au- 
“  thority,  as  it  hath  been  assumed  and  exercised  of  late,  is  illegal.” 

President  Van  Buren’s  treatment  of  the  Judiciary  affords  only  one  of  numerous  evidences  of 
his  success  in  “perfecting  the  work  so  gloriously  begun.”  While  he  holds  on  to  all  his  legacy 
of  usurpations  and  abuses,  he  has,  in  some  portentous  instances  besides  those  already  mention¬ 
ed,  transcended  his  “  venerated  chief” — has  out-Heroded  Herod.  The  only  mitigated  symptom 
which  you  will  be  able  to  detect  in  his  conduct  is,  that  in  his  first  annual  message  he  styles  Gen¬ 
eral  Jackson  not  his  “  illustrious  predecessor,”  but  his  “ immediate  predecessor.”  This  slight 
spark  of  rebellion  was,  however,  soon  extinguished,  and  the  flame  of  loyalty  has  since  blazed 
more  brightly  than  before. 


28 


Allow  me  to  refer  you  to  a  few  more  specimens  of  the  “  principles  and  policy”  peculiar  to  the 
£<  honored  instrument:” 

In  his  message  at  the  special  session,  a  leading  text  is,  that  “  communities  are  apt  to  look  to 
Government  for  too  much.”  The  running  commentary  is,  that  the  people  have  no  right  to  look 
to  Government  for  any  thing;  that  Government  was  instituted  for  its  own  sake,  not  for  the  sake 
of  the  people;  that  it  is  separate  and  distinct  from  the  people;  and  that  there  ought  to  be  two 
sorts  of  currency  in  the  country — a  better  currency  for  the  office-holders,  and  a  worse  currency 
for  the  people.  This  is  not  the  opinion  of  the  people  themselves.  They  begin  their  Constitu¬ 
tion  by  saying  : 

“  We,  the  people  of  the  United  States,  in  order  to  form  a  more  perfect  Union,  establish  jus- 
“  tice,  insure  domestic  tranquillity,  provide  for  the  common  defence,  promote  the  general  wel- 
“  fare,  and  secure  the  blessings  of  liberty  to  ourselves  and  our  posterity,  do  ordain  and  establish 
“  this  Constitution  for  the  United  States  of  America:” 

In  his  two  first  annual  messages  he  recommends  a  plan  for  giving  away,  or  rather  bartering 
for  votes,  to  particular  States  the  public  lands — the  common  property  of  all  the  States: 

In  his  annual  message  of  December  3,  1838,  he  calls  for  a  committee  of  Congress  to  inspect 
the  accounts  of  fiscal  officers,  and  report,  not  to  Congress,  but  to  him,;  thus  seeking  to  degrade 
the  Representatives  of  the  people  into  agents  of  the  Executive: 

In  his  annual  message  transmitted  to  Congress  on  the  24th  of  December,  1839,  he  asserts, 
and  in  a  mode  characteristically  insidious,  that  “the  Executive”  is  “a  component  part  of  the 
legislative  power;”  though  the  very  first  article  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  declares 
that  “all  legislative  powers  herein  granted  shall  be  vested  in  a  Congress  of  the  United  States , 
which  shall  consist  of  a  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives :” 

And  in  the  same  message  he  “  cannot  too  strongly  recommend”  the  plan  of  his  Secretary  of 
War  for  raising  a  militia  force  of  two  hundred  thousand  men,  to  be  armed,  equipped,  and 
paid  by  the  United  States,  and  of  course  under  the  command  of  the  President,  one-half  of  whom 
are  to  be  in  active  service. 

You  cannot  fail  to  see  that  this  last  recommendation  is,  in  substance,  a  demand  for  an  im¬ 
mense  standing  army.  Truly,  this  is  the  power  of  the  sword;  and  if  the  President  gain,  as 
he  will  do  if  the  sub-Treasury  bill  pass,  the  power  of  the  purse  too,  where  would  be  the  differ¬ 
ence  between  Sultan  Abdul  Medjid  and  Sultan  Martin  Van  Buren?  Yes — there  would  still  be 
one  point  of  difference,  and  that  decidedly  against  us.  The  Turkish  brother  does  noi  pretend 
to  be  a  “Democrat.” 

I  have  before  noticed  other  additions  made  by  President  Van  Buren  to  the  “  principles  and 
policy”  of  President  Jackson,  and  will  not  advert  to  them  again. 

Fellow-citizens,  I  should  insult  your  understandings  and  trifle  with  your  time,  by  asking  you 
whether  the  “pernicious  projects”  “begun”  and  enforced  by  one  of  these  Presidents,  and  ad¬ 
vanced  almost  to  a  “  perfect”  state  by  the  other,  are  consistent  with  the  Constitution  of  your 
country,  or  with  any  known  polity  which  recognises  the  people  as  the  source  of  Government! 
I  will  not  ask  you  whether  the  history  of  the  present  admmistrative  system  is  not,  in  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  “a  history  of  repeated  injuries  and  usurpations,  all 
having  in  direct  object  the  establishment  of  an  absolute  tyranny  over  these  States'?’  But  I  will 
show  you  the  President’s  own  opinion  on  the  subject.  In  the  report  in  1826,  before  cited,  when 
not  one  of  these  “injuries”  or  “usurpations”  had  been  committed,  the  mere  possibility  of  any 
of  them  roused  the  indignation  of  Mr.  Senator  Van  Buren.  “  What,”  he  exclaimed,  with  a  patri¬ 
ot’s  generous  rage,  and  a  prophet’s  far-seeing  eye,  “what  will  this  be  but  the  Government  of 
i(  one  man  ?  And  what  is  the  Government  of  one  man  but  a  monarchy  1  Names  are  nothing. 
“  The  nature  of  a  thing  is  in  its  substance.  The  first  Roman  Emperor  was  styled  Emperor  of 
“  the  Republic,  and  the  last  French  Emperor  took  the  same  title;  and  their  respective  countries 
“  were  just  as  essentially  monarchical  before  as  after  the  assumption  of  these  titles.  It  can- 
“  not  be  denied  or  dissembled  but  that  this  Federal  Government  gravitates  to  the  same  point.' 
In  less  than  three  years  from  the  date  of  this  malediction,  the  law  of  political  gravitation  fell  into 
the  keeping  of  the  Newtons  of  the  “spoils  system.”  Only  eleven  more  years — scarcely  more 
than  half  a  generation — have  since  passed,  and  you  all  see — you  all  feel,  what  “essentially” 
“  this  Federal  Government”  is  now. 

Time  presses  ;  and  I  leap  over  many  pregnant  topics  of  the  report  to  get  at  the 
Peculations,  and  the  “Superintendence  of  the  Revenue.” 

You  have  already  seen  that  peculations  must,  on  general  principles,  be  the  regular,  and  that 
they  have,  to  an  enormous  extent,  been  the  actual,  consequence  of  the  spoils  system.  The  de¬ 
falcations  of  Swartwout,  Price,  and  a  score  or  two  of  the  land  receivers,  alone,  have  been  esti¬ 
mated  at  three  millions  of  dollars.  The  full  amount  of  all  the  official  robberies  is  still  un¬ 
known,  and  there  are  strong  reasons  for  the  fear  that  it  is  incalculable.  One  of  the  first  acts 
of  the  Investigating  Committee  of  1839  was  to  pass,  on  the  21st  of  January,  a  resolution  calling 
on  the  President  of  the  United  States  to  cause 


f 


“This  committee  to  be  furnished  by  the  proper  Executive  Departments  with  a  table  showing 
“  the  defalcations  which  had  occurred  among  collectors,  receivers,  and  disbursers  of  public  money, 
“  and  other  public  officers,  since  the  4th  day  of  March,  1829  ;  the  names  of  the  defaulters;  the 
“  amount  of  each  defalcation  ;  when  each  case  occurred  ;  the  length  of  time  each  case  has  exist- 
“  ed ;  what  steps  have  been  taken  by  the  proper  Departments  or  officers  to  prosecute  the  default- 
“  ers  and  to  secure  the  United  States,  in  each  case;  and  what  defaulters  are  retained  in  the  same 
“  offices  in  which  they  became  defaulters,  or  have  been  appointed  to  other  offices.” 

The  President  referred  this  communication  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  That  function¬ 
ary,  after  keeping  the  committee  waiting  more  than  four  weeks,  informed  them  that  the  time  be¬ 
fore  the  close  of  the  session  of  Congress  was  too  short  for  collecting  the  information !  From  this 
response,  the  committee  say, 

They  “are  compelled  reluctantly  to  infer, 

“  1st.  That  the  accounts  and  records  of  the  several  Departments,  in  general,  are  so  incomplete 
“  and  defective  as  not  to  exhibit,  without  great  labor  and  delay,  the  true  relations  of  collectors, 
“  receivers,  and  disbursers  of  the  public  money,  and  of  other  officers,  to  the  Government,  so  as  to 
“  distinguish  debtors  from  defaulters,  and  creditors  from  both  ;  or, 

“  2dly.  That  the  number  of  the  defaulters  has  multiplied  so  rapidly  since  1829,  under  the 
“  system  of  accountability  pursued  towards  collectors,  receivers,  and  disbursers  of  the  public 
“  money,  and  other  officers,  as  to  preclude  the  practicability  of  securing  an  account  current  of 
“  their  defalcations  upon  the  records  of  the  Departments,  with  all  the  clerical  force  at  the  com- 
“  mand  of  those  Departments  under  existing  laws  and  appropriations.” 

The  committee  might  properly  have  drawn  both  these  inferences.  Public  robbery  is  a  subject 
on  which  our  riders  prudently  think  “  the  least  said  the  soonest  mended;”  and  that,  though 
“  delay  is  dangerous”  to  the  people,  it  is  good  for  them,  for  it  puts  off  the  evil  day.  The  Pres¬ 
ident,  in  his  last  annual  message,  after  admitting  that  Swartwout  may  have  been  a  sub-Treasurer , 
and  doubting  whether  his  defalcation  could  “  be  usefully  referred  to  as  a  test  of  the  compara¬ 
tive  safety ”  of  the  system,  says: 

“  Additional  information  will  also  be  furnished  bv  the  report  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
“  in  reply  to  a  call  made  upon  that  officer  by  the  House  of  Representatives  at  the  last  session, 
“  requiring  detailed  information  on  the  subject  of  defaults  by  public  officers  or  agents  under  each. 
“  Administration,  from  1789  to  1837.  This  document  will  be  submitted  to  you  in  a  few  days.” 

It  is  now  the  18th  of  February,  more  than  seven  weeks  since  the  opening  of  the  session,  and 
this  document,  called  for  by  the  last  Congress,  has  not,  so  far  as  I  can  learn,  yet  been  furnished  ! 

The  President,  in  announcing  Swartwout.’ s  defalcation  to  Congress,  suggests  “the  establish- 
“  ment  of  a  more  severe  and  secure  system  for  the  safe-keeping  and  disbursement  of  the  public 
“  moneys  than  any  that  has  heretofore  existed.”  The  purpose  of  the  suggestion  was  to  insinu¬ 
ate  a  defence  of  the  Administration  against  the  charge  of  negligence,  at  the  least,  which  con¬ 
science,  that  unerring  monitor,  warned  him  would  be  made.  His  aim  was  to  persuade  the  peo¬ 
ple  that  they  had  been  robbed  of  their  money,  from  day  to  day  for  a  period  of  seven  years,  as  he 
says,  because  the  laws  for  its  security  were  defective.  The  insufficiency  of  this  plea  is  as  mani¬ 
fest  as  the  sun  at  a  summer’s  noonday.  The  wit  of  man  never  devised  means  more  conducive 
to  their  object  than  is  the  system  constituted  by  acts  of  Congress  and  the  regulations  made  by 
Hamilton,  Gallatin,  and  Dallas,  Secretaries  of  the  Treasury,  to  the  safety  of  the  public  moneys. 
Under  that  system,  vigilantly  administered,  they  had  remained  safe,  with  such  occasional  excep¬ 
tions,  and  these  were  slight,  infrequent,  and  promptly  met,  as  no  system  could  entirely  prevent, 
for  forty  years.  At  last  the  unhappy  discovery  was  made,  that  the  interests  of  the  Government 
were  separate  from  the  interests  of  the  People;  that  “all  communities  are  apt  to  look  to  Gov* 
ernment  for  too  much.”  It  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  spoils  system,  that,  while  powers  at  least 
doubtful  are  boldly  exerted,  and  others  as  boldly  usurped,  when  the  interests  of  the  party  are  the 
object,  yet,  in  cases  involving  only  the  interests  of  the  people,  no  law  is  plain  enough  for  Execu¬ 
tive  scruples.  In  such  cases,  the  fear  lest,  in  executing  a  law,  an  officer  should  transcend  his 
powers,  is  given  as  the  reason  for  not  executing  the  law  at  all.  The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  is 
of  opinion  that  the  clause  of  the  law  of  1789,  requiring  him  “to  superintend  the  collection  of  the 
revenue,”  is  not  sufficiently  distinct.  Superintendence,  he  argues,  does  not  mean  control ;  and, 
therefore,  if  I  attempt  to  control  a  collector  or  other  fiscal  subordinate,  I  shall  be  exercising  a 
power  not  conferred  on  me  by  law,  and  that  would  not  be  right.  No,  I  think  it  far  better  to  let 
him  do  as  he  pleases.  I  have  looked  into  all  the  vocabularies,  from  Dr.  Johnson’s  Dictionary 
down  to  the  Treasury  of  Knowledge,  to  find  out  what  “ superintend ”  means;  for,  ever  since 
General  Jackson  was  made  President,  wc  have  made  it  a  point  to  go  for  good  English  as  strictly 
as  we  go  for  the  Constitution.  Now,  it  is  true  that  Dr.  Johnson  defines  “ superintendence ”  to 
be  “  superior  care ;  the  act  of  overseeing  with  authority But  that  only  means  that  the  Secre¬ 
tary  of  the  Treasury  is  a  superior  man ;  and  has  authority  to  do  whatever  a  defaulter  tells  him  to 
do.  I  am  quite  clear  that  “oversee”  means  “overlook,”  because  “see”  sometimes  means 
‘‘look;”  and  “overlook”  is  the  same  as  “look  over.” — And  truly  Mr.  Secretary  Woodbury 
“looked  over,”  yes,  right  “over”  Swartwout,  Price,  Harris,  Boyd,  and  a  hundred  other. 


30 


“main  pillars  of  the  democratic  cause,”  while  they  were  plundering  the  public  Treasury,  under 

his  eyes. 

An  edifying  exception  to  the  mode,  habitual  with  the  spoils’  dynasty,  of  superintending  the 
revenue,  was  produced  by  one  of  the  custom-house  officers  at  New  York,  on  his  examination 
before  the  last  Investigating  Committee.  It  appears  in  a  letter  from  the  Treasury  Department, 
dated  September  19,  1837,  and  is  in  the  following  words: 

“  Joseph  Hopkins’s  bill,  charged  in  contingent  account  one  hundred  and  ten  dollars  and  fifty 
“  cents,  per  voucher  No.  3,  should  be  one  hundred  ana  ten  dollars  onlt  ;  and  you  are  requested 
**  to  see  that  the  fifty  cents  overpaid  is  refunded  by  the  said  Hopkins  in  his  next  account. 

“  Very  respectfully,  your  obedient  servant, 

'  «  GEORGE  WOLF,  Comptroller. 

“Samuel  Swaiitwout,  Esq.,  Collector,  New  York.” 

[A  voice  here  exclaimed,  “  What  was  the  postage  of  the  letter  I”  There  was  no  postage; 
the  letter  was  either  franked  or  smuggled.] 

This  is  very  good,  so  far  as  it  goes  ;  and,  if  you  believe  that  Mr.  Hopkins  did  refund  the  fifty 
cents ,  you  will,  of  course,  give  the  Administration  credit  for  that  sum  in  their  peculation  account 
-with  the  people.  The  debit  side  of  that  account  is  some  millions  of  dollars ,  yet  untold.  The 
account  will  not  be  fully  audited  till  after  the  4.th  of  March,  1841.  Meanwhile  the  people  know 
enough  of  it  to  ask  the  guards  of  the  Treasury,  in  a  voice  of  thunder,  Why  is  it  that  you  have 
allowed  us  to  be  plundered  of  all  this  money  ?  Our  pensive  President  answers  for  them,  “  The 
“  appointing  power  cannot  always  be  well  advised  in  its  selections  “  public  officers  are  not 
“  always  proof  against  temptation.”  This  plea  is  rather  too  abstract — too  philosophical  for  a  suf¬ 
fering  people;  and  they  press  for  something  more  specific.  And  then  the  answer  comes,  Though 
we  have  lost  considerable  sums  for  you,  yet  it  could  not  have  been  through  want  of  vigilance, 
for  don’t  you  see  how  particular  we  were  with  Hopkins  1  The  people  ask  again,  Why  did  you 
let  the  big  robbers  escape  1  Why  let  Swartwout  go  to  England  1  why  let  Price  go  to  France  I 
why  let  Boyd  remain,  lording  it,  like  a  great  land  prince,  over  our  own  lands  in  the  West  1  And 
so  the  people  go  on  with  the  chronicles  of  the  defaulters.  You  permitted  those  men  to  rob  us 
without  mercy,  but  at  least  you  might  have  caught  the  robbers.  Why  did  you  not  catch  them  1 
We  were  too  busy.  Busy  ?  Why  this  was  your  business;  what  were  you  doing?  We  were 
busy  trying  to  catch  Hopkins. 

There  is  a  passage  in  a  letter  from  President  Washington  to  his  Secretary  of  War,  which  de¬ 
serves  the  attentive  consideration  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  It  is  as  follows  : 

“  You  will  recollect,  I  dare  say,  that  more  than  once  I  expressed  to  you  my  opinion  of  the  ex- 
“  pediency  of  committing  the  details  of  the  Department  to  the  exertions  of  others,  and  of  bestow -  t 

“  mg  your  thoughts  and  attention  on  the  more  important  duties  of  it ;  which,  in  the  scenes 
“  we  were  contemplating,  were  alone  sufficient  to  occupy  the  time  and  all  the  consideration  of 
“  the  Secretary.  1  went  no  further  then,  nor  should  I  have  renewed  the  subject  now,  had  not 
“  the  delay  in  issuing  the  commissions  and  commencing  the  recruiting  service  excited  great  rep¬ 
robation  and  blame,  though,  as  I  have  observed  before,  no  one  knows  where  with  precision  to 
“  fix  it.  Generally,  however,  it  is  attributed  to  the  want  of  system  and  exertion  in  the  Depart- 

ment  of  War.” 

“The  want  of  system  and  exertion  in  the”  Treasury  Department  was  undoubtedly  a  main 
cause  of  the  unparalleled  peculations  which  have  amazed  the  world.  But  the  predominant 
cause  lies  deeper.  It  lies,  as  I  have  shown  you,  in  the  very  foundations. of  the  spoils’  system. 

The  genius  of  that  system  subjects  the  head  of  the  Government  to  the  dominion  of  the  subordi¬ 
nates.  One  result  is  that  the  defaulters  are  a  distinct  and  powerful  class — a  “  moneyed  aristoc¬ 
racy ;”  almost  “a  component  part”  of  the  power  of  this  Government — a  sort  of  fourth  estate,  ad¬ 
ded  to  the  legislative,  executive,  and  judicial  departments,  and  exerting  a  controlling  influence 
over  them  all  except  the  last.  That,  thank  Heaven,  is  yet  safe.  The  spirit  of  Marshall  is  still 
alive.  The  ermine  of  our  judges  is  still  unspotted. 

Fellow-citizens,  I  have  trespassed  a  long  time  on  your  generous  indulgence,  and  yet  have  said 
only  a  fragment  of  what  I  might  say.  Many  topics  have  been  omitted,  and  none  has  been  ex¬ 
hausted.  I  must  hasten  to  a  close.  But  any  notice,  however  brief,  of  the  present  administrative 
system  would  be  inexcusable,  which  should  entirely  pass  over  the 

“Hollow  and  Fraudulent  Pretences” 

which  are  its  basis.  Their  “  name  is  Legion,”  for  they  “  are  many.”  The  history  of  the  coun¬ 
try  for  the  last  eleven  years  shows  that  all  the  professions  by  which  the  “Reformers”  sought 
and  obtained  power  were  false  pretences;  that  they  generated  abuses  far  transcending  not  only 
all  example,  but  even  the  fancy  pictures  drawn  by  their  most  “eminent  hands” — their  political 
painters  when  hunting  after  office;  and  that  their  “  principles  and  policy”  have  been  marked  by 
apparent  zeal  in  breaking  every  pledge  which  they  had  made.  To  one  only  of  their  deceptions 
I  shall  now  allude,  and  that  is  their  name.  They  call  themselves  the  “  Democratic  party.” 

They,  who  are  for  a  “  Government  of  one  man,”  holding  both  sword  and  purse,  and  surrounded 


by  a  nobility  of  peculators,  the  strength  and  ornament  of  the  throne  ;  they,  who  think  that  Gov¬ 
ernment  is  a  concern  distinct  from,  and  independent  of,  the  people,  which  ought  to  have  a  “  bet¬ 
ter  currency,”  while  a  worse  one  is  good  enough  for  the  people  ;  they,  in  whose  keeping  the  pub¬ 
lic  money  vanishes  like  chaff  before  the  wind  ;  they,  who  wish  the  laborer  to  have  no  more  to 
cat  and  wear  than  is  barely  enough  to  prevent  starvation  and  freezing,  barely  enough  to  give  him 
strength  to  toil  for  the  large  capitalist;  they,  yes  they,  forsooth,  are  the  “  Democratic  party  /” 
An  English  judge  was  once  provoked  to  exclaim,  “  There  is  something  in  the  impudence  of  the 
defendant  which  is  almost  awful!"  But  it  seems  blushing,  maiden  modesty,  when  compared 
with  the  impudence  of  these  defendants  in  calling  themselves  “ Democrats .”  No;  if,  as  their 
wise  men  have  said,  “  names  are  nothing — the  nature  of  a  thing  is  in  its  substance,”  yuu,  fel¬ 
low-citizens,  are  the  “ Democrats ,”  in  the  constitutional,  common-sense  meaning  of  the  word. 
You  believe  that  the  people  are  the  true  and  only  source  of  all  political  power;  you  are  for  exact 
limits  to  all  authority,  and  especially  executive,  which  they  delegate  ;  you  believe  that  the  object 
of  Government  is  the  “  general  welfare”  of  the  people,  and  not  the  aggrandizement  of  office-hold¬ 
ers  ;  you  are  for  holding  public  officers  to  a  strict  accountableness,  and  for  the  control  by  the  peo¬ 
ple  of  their  own  money  ;  you  are  for  using  that  money  economically  ;  you  are  for  fostering  the 
industry  of  the  country,  and  for  enabling  the  poor  man  to  better  his  condition ;  you  do  not,  it  is 
true,  like  the  spoilsmen,  flatter  the  working  classes,  or  any  other  classes  of  your  fellow-citizes  ; 
you  respect  them  too  much  to  flatter  them  ;  and,  besides,  you  have  no  sinister  designs  on  them. 

Yes,  I  repeat,  you  are  the  true  “  Democrats.”  Our  opponents  have  stolen  our  name.  Nay, 
so  bold  and  barefaced  is  the  theft,  that  I  had  almost  called  it  a  robbery.  But  it  is  said  to  be  es¬ 
sential  to  this  crime  that  the  party  robbed  should  be  “put  in  fear;”  and  we,  certainly,  do  not 
fear  the  spoilsmen.  No;  they  fear  us.  They  feel  that  the  American  people  must  detest  their 
4(  principles  and  policy.”  Their  only  hope  of  escaping  merited  expulsion  from  power,  and,  per¬ 
haps,  something  worse,  was  expected  disunion  in  our  ranks.  The  hope  is  prostrated  by  our 
unanimity.  And  this  leads  me  to  notice  the 

Conduct  and  Prospects  of  the  Opposition. 

The  report  on  your  table  appeals  to  “the  enthusiastic  response  which  the  friends  of  liberty 
“  have  made  to  the  Harrisburg  nominations,”  as  evidence  that  the  opposition  are  contending,  not 
for  men,  but  for  principles.  Were  it  otherwise,  the  friends  of  that  accomplished  citizen,  whose 
"valor  and  martial  abilities  contributed  so  largely  to  the  safety  and  glory  of  his  country  in  one  war, 
and  whose  civic  talents  as  largely  contributed  to  avert  from  her  the  horrors  of  another,  would 
have  sat  down  with  sullen  brows  and  folded  arms,  when  they  found  that  his  claims  to  the  Presi¬ 
dency,  however  respectfully  considered  by  the  convention,  were  ultimately  rejected.  But  they 
have  not  done  so.  They  are  as  ardent  in  supporting  the  choice  of  the  convention  as  if  it  had 
been  proposed  by  themselves. 

Yes,  fellow-citizens,  justly  does  the  paper  on  your  table  applaud  the  magnanimity  which  has 
sacrificed  at  the  shrine  of  patriotism  “  cherished  preferences  for  individuals.”  If,  in  any  nation 
or  in  any  age,  a  party  could  stand  excused  to  themselves,  to  their  country,  and  to  posterity,  for 
identifying  men  with  principles,  who  might  have  relied  on  the  excuse  more  confidently  than  the 
friends  of  that  other  citizen,  whose  claims  to  the  Presidency  were  postponed  by  the  Harrisburg 
convention  I  That  citizen,  the  mention  of  whose  name  this  evening  produced  such  deep,  re¬ 
peated,  protracted,  and  deafening  bursts  of  enthusiasm  1  It  is  a  name  inseparable  from  your  coun¬ 
try’s  history ;  it  is  the  name  of  an  orator,  the  strains  of  whose  eloquence,  even  in  another  land 
and  in  another  language,  have  been  the  chosen  war-cry,  on  the  battle’s  eve,  to  inspire  men  to 
“  do  or  die,”  for  liberty1?  it  is  the  name  of  the  patriot  who  has  stood  for  his  country  in  weal  and 
in  wo,  and  has  carried  her  safely  through  the  most  fearful  trials ;  it  is  the  name  of  the  statesman 
who  has  been  a  master-builder  of  the  edifice  of  her  greatness  and  prosperity ;  whom  the  very  fac¬ 
tions,  of  which  it  was  the  daily  and  hourly  work  to  find  spots  in  the  brightness  of  his  glory,  have 
been  the  first,  when  danger  was  at  hand,  to  fly  to  for  counsel  and  for  succor ;  who  never  re¬ 
fused  the  boon,  and  never  granted  it  in  vain,  though  sure  that  the  same  factions  would,  as  they 
did,  attempt  the  next  moment  to  sting  the  powerful  and  generous  hand  which  saved  them  ;  it  is 
the  name  of  the  man  to  whom  every  political  adherent,  and  many  a  political  adversary,  gives  the 
warm  tribute  of  his  affections.  When  the  supporters  of  such  a  candidate  resign  him,  and  are 
among  the  foremost,  except  himself,  to  espouse  the  cause  of  another,  who  shall  say  that  high- 
souled  principle,  that  loyalty  to  their  country,  is  not  the  polar  star  of  the  Opposition? 

That  great  party,  a  large  majority,  I  doubt  not,  of  the  people  of  the  United  States,  have  re¬ 
solved,  with  one  voice,  to  support  with  one  hand  the  election  of  William  Henry  Harrisox 
to  the  Presidency.  Delightful  would  it  be  to  us,  fellow-citizens,  to  scan  the  beauties  of  his  pure 
and  brilliant  character.  But  so  much  time  has  been  devoted  to  the  examination  of  our  political 
diseases,  that  only  a  few  moments  remain  for  discoursing  on  the  merits  of  the  remedy.  Allow 
me  to  exhibit  to  you  a  brief  sketch  of  our  candidate  from  an  unbiassed  pencil ;  that  of  an  intel¬ 
ligent  French  traveller  who  visited  the  United  States  in  1834  : 

“I  met  (says  M.  Chevalier)  with  one  incident  in  Cincinnati,  which  I  shall  long  remember. 
**  I  had  observed  at  the  hotel  table  a  man  of  ;about  the  medium  height,  stout  and  muscular,  and 


of  about  the  age  of  sixty  years,  yet  with  the  active  step  and  lively  air  of  youth.  I  had  been 
**  struck  with  his  open  and  cheerful  expression,  the  amenity  of  his  manners,  and  a  certain  air 
<c  of  command  which  appeared  through  his  plain  dress.  ‘That  is  (said  my  friend)  General 
‘‘  Harrison,  Clerk  of  the  Cincinnati  Court  of  Common  Pleas.’  ‘  What!  General  Harrison 
‘‘  of  the  Tippecanoe  and  the  Thames]’  The  same;  the  ex-general,  the  conqueror  of  Tecum- 
t(  seh  and  Proctor,  the  avenger  of  our  disasters  on  the  Raisin  and  at  Detroit,  the  ex-Governor 
‘‘  of  the  Territory  of  Indiana,  the  ex-Senator  in  Congress,  the  ex-Minister  of  the  United  States 
‘‘  to  one  of  the  South  American  republics.  He  has  grown  old  in  the  service  of  his  country ;  he 
f<  has  passed  twenty  years  of  his  life  in  those  fierce  wars  with  the  Indians  in  which  there  was 
‘‘  less  glory  to  be  won,  but  more  danger  to  be  encountered,  than  at  Rivoli  and  Austerlitz.  He  is 
t(  now  poor,  with  a  numerous  family,  neglected  by  the  Federal  Government,  although  yet  vigor- 

ous,  because  he  has  the  independence  to  think  for  himself.’  ” 

The  martial  achievements  of  General  Harrison  have  placed  him  high  on  the  roll  of  great 
captains,  and  have  elicited,  in  almost  every  form,  enthusiastic  expressions  of  national  gratitude. 
Terrible  in  battle,  he  was  merciful  in  victory.  In  one  of  his  general  orders,  issued  while  he 
was  commander-in-chief  of  the  Northwestern  army,  after  praising  the  valor  displayed  by  his 
troops  in  an  action  with  the  Indians,  he  says : 

“  But  the  character  of  this  gallant  detachment,  exhibiting,  as  it  did,  perseverance,  fortitude, 
“  and  bravery,  would,  however,  be  incomplete,  if,  in  the  midst  of  victory,  they  had  forgotten 
“  the  feelings  of  humanity.  It  is  with  the  sincerest  pleasure  that  the  general  has  heard  that  the 
“  most  punctual  obedience  was  paid  to  his  orders,  in  not  only  saving  all  the  women  and  children, 
“  but  in  sparing  all  the  warriors  who  ceased  to  resist;  and  that  even  when  vigorously  attacked 
“  by  the  enemy,  the  claims  of  mercy  prevailed  over  every  sense  of  their  own  danger,  and  this 
“  heroic  band  respected  the  lives  of  their  prisoners.  Let  an  account  of  murdered  innocence  be 
“  opened  in  the  records  of  heaven  against  oxjr  enemies  alone.  The  American  soldier  will 
“  follow  the  example  of  his  Government;  and  the  sword  of  the  one  will  not  be  raised  against 
“  the  fallen  and  helpless,  nor  the  gold  of  the  other  be  paid  for  the  scalps  of  a  massacred  enemy.” 

No  general  ever  enjoyed  in  a  greater  degree  the  confidence  of  his  troops ;  a  tribute  not  merely 
to  his  talents  as  a  commander,  but  also  to  his  virtues  as  a  man.  “  His  soldiers,”  says  the  his¬ 
torian,  “seemed  to  anticipate  the  wishes  of  their  general;  it  was  only  necessary  to  be  known 
“  that  he  wished  something  done,  and  all  were  anxious  to  risk  their  lives  in  its  accomplishment. 
“  His  men  would  have  fought  better  and  suffered  more  with  him,  than  with  any  other  general 
“  in  America.”  His  influence  over  them  was  so  extraordinary,  that  he  was  asked  how  he  had 
acquired  it.  The  answer  is  memorable:  “ By  treating  them  with  affection  and  kindness;  by 
“  always  recollecting  that  they  were  my  fellow-citizens,  whose  feelings  I  was  bound  to  respect ; 
“  and  by  sharing  with  them,  on  every  occasion,  the  hardships  which  they  were  obliged  to  un- 
“  dergo.”  And  yet  they  well  understood  that  their  general  would  require  them  to  do  their  duty 
to  their  country  :  and  that  he  would  be  content  with  nothing  less. 

It  is  not  on  the  military  exploits  of  General  Harrison,  illustrious  as  they  are,  that  his  advo¬ 
cates  rest,  nor  that  he  would  himself  rest,  his  claims  to  the  Chief  Magistracy  of  the  republic. 
In  one  of  his  admirable  compositions,  he  says : 

“In  bestowing  the  palm  of  merit,  the  wmrld  has  become  wiser  than  formerly.  The  successful 
“  warrior  is  no  longer  regarded  as  entitled  to  the  first  place  in  the  temple  of  fame.  Talents  of 
“  this  kind  have  become  too  common,  and  too  often  used  for  mischievous  purposes,  to  be  re- 
“  garded  as  they  once  were.  In  this  enlightened  age,  the  mere  hero  o£  the  field,  and  the  suc- 
“  cessful  leader  of  armies,  may,  for  the  moment,  attract  attention.  But  it  will  be  such  as  is 
“  bestowed  on  the  passing  meteor,  whose  blaze  is  no  longer  remembered  when  it  is  no  longer 
“  seen.  To  be  esteemed  eminently  great,  it  is  necessary  to  be  eminently  good.  The  qualities 
“  of  the  hero  and  the  general  must  be  devoted  to  the  advantage  of  mankind,  before  he  will  be 
“  permitted  to  assume  the  title  of  their  benefactor;  and  the  station  which  he  will  hold  in  their 
“  regard  and  affections  will  depend,  not  upon  the  number  and  splendor  of  his  victories,  but  upon 
“  the  results  and  the  use  he  may  make  of  the  influence  he  acquires  from  them. 

“  If  the  fame  of  our  Washinton  depended  upon  his  military  achievements,  would  the  com- 
“  mon  consent  of  the  world  allow  him  the  pre-eminence  he  possesses]  The  victories  at  Tren- 
“  ton,  Monmouth,  and  York,  brilliant  as  they  were,  exhibiting  as  they  certainly  did  the  highest 
“  grade  of  military  talents,  are  scarcely  thought  of.  The  source  of  the  veneration  and  esteem 
“  which  is  entertained  for  his  character,  by  every  description  of  politicians,  the  monarchist  and 
“  aristocrat,  as  well  as  the  republican,  is  to  be  found  in  his  undeviating  and  exclusive  devoted- 
“  ness  to  the  interest  of  his  country.  No  selfish  consideration  was  ever  suffered  to  intrude  itself 
“  into  his  mind.  For  his  country  he  conquered;  and  the  unrivalled  and  increasing  prosperity 
“  of  that  country  is  constantly  adding  fresh  glory  to  his  name.” 

These  are  the  sentiments  of  a  man,  whose  own  history  would  have  furnished  him  with  splen¬ 
did  apologies  for  over-valuing  the  military  character  !  His  fitness  for  the  Presidency  has  been 
tested  and  ascertained  by  his  conduct  in  numerous  and  important  civil  trusts.  These,  like  his 


33 


)  • 


military  services,  began  in  early  youth ;  and  the  country  was  finally  deprived  of  them  by  the 
proscriptive  policy  of  the  spoilers.  No  illustration  of  that  policy  can  be  more  striking  than  the 
fact,  that  General  Harrison  was  superseded  as  Minister  to  Columbia  by  Thomas  I*.  Moore .  * 
During  the  interval  General  Harrison  had  been  Secretary  and  Lieutenant  Governor  of  the 
Northwestern  Territory,  Governor  of  Indiana,  Commissioner  to  treat  with  the  Indians,  Dele¬ 
gate  to  Congress,  Representative  to  Congress,  a  Senator  in  the  Legislature  of  Ohio,  and  a  Sen¬ 
ator  of  the  United  States.  I  shall  not  stop  to  enumerate  the  results  of  his  labors  in  these  various 
situations.  In  one  of  them  he  acquired  for  his  country  a  fertile  territory  of  more  than  sixty 
millions  of  acres,  and  on  terms  at  once  advantageous  to  the  United  States,’  and  just  to  the  In¬ 
dians.  The  complication  of  his  duties  as  Governor  of  Indiana  made  him,  to  a  great  extent,  the 
organ  of  the  whole  federal  power  in  that  Territory,  and  constantly  called  into  exercise  the  high¬ 
est  administrative  talents  and  moral  endowments.  As  a  lawgiver  General  Harrison  was  a  # 
prominent  actor  in  the  preparation  and  discussion'  of  legislative  business.  Many  of  the  questions 
of  the  day  were  of  the  highest  moment.  On  these,  as  well  as  on  others  of  inferior  dignity, 
he  was  distinguished  for  close  investigation,  accuracy  of  judgment,  readiness  and  skill  as  a  de¬ 
bater,  and  manly,  impressive  eloquence ;  displaying  a  mind  of  great  native  power,  strengthened 
by  habits  of  patient  thought,  and  enlarged  and  enriched  by  study.  His  compositions  are  nu¬ 
merous,  and  the  work  of  his  own  mind  exclusively.  Indeed,  they  may  be  said  to  be  from  his 
own  pen,  in  every  sense  of  the  phrase,  for  he  was  his  own  amanuensis.  They  are,  like  his 
character,  straightforward,  vigorous,  beautiful,  and  pure.  They  are  the  writings  of  a  business 
man,  who  never  stops  the  stream  of  his  thoughts  to  hunt  for  words  in  which  to  clothe  tljem, 
but  whose  good  sense  and  good  taste  always  bring  the  right  words  to  him,  and  put  them  in  the  . 
right  places. 

His  moral  are  as  elevated  as  his  intellectual  qualities.  _  A  sense  of  justice  has  been  the  rule 
of  his  whole  life,  public  and  private.  Nothing  but  the  most  scrupulous  regard  to  justice  could 
have  enabled  him  to  execute,  with  the  universal  satisfaction  which  he  produced,  the  vast  and 
perilous  powers  that  were  delegated  to  him.  Of  his  justice  in  private  life,  Let  a  single  illus¬ 
tration  suffice.  An  individual  held  possession  of  land  in  Ohio  by  a  merely  equitable  title.  De¬ 
siring  to  purchase  the  legal  title,  which  was  in  General  Harrison,  he  called  on  the  General  and 
proposed  terms  of  compromise.  “  Sir,”  said  General  Harrison,  “  where  I  have  no  moral  title 
I  have  no  legal  title.”  What  sublimity  in  these  few  simple  words!  Mr.  Van  Buren  would 
think  them  simple  in  more  senses  than  one.  A  distinguished  statesman  of  South  Carolina  has 
said  that  General  Harrison’s  victory  of. the  Thames  “was  such  as  to  have  secured  to  a  Roman 
general,  in  the  best  days  of  the  republic,  the  honors  of  a  triumph.”  Never  did  Rome,  even  in 
the  time  of  Regulus,.  produce  an  instance  of  loftier  integrity  than  the  incident  just  noticed. 

For  pecuniary  generosity,  General  Harrison  -is  proverbial.  Careful  as  he  has  always  been 
of  the  people’s  money,  of  his  own  he  is  lavish  to  a  fault.  His  unbounded  liberality  is  one  of 
the  many  causes  of  the  appellation  by  which  he  is  familiarly  knowm  in  the  West,  “  The  poor 
man’s  friend.”  He  is  equally  remarkable  for  that  rarer  and  more  enlarged  generosity, 
belonging  to  only  noble  minds — the  generosity  which  can  forgive.  Before  the  battle  of  Tip¬ 
pecanoe,*  an  agent  of  the  enemy  attempted  to  assassinate  him.  The  agent  was  discovered, 
tried  for  the  offence,  convicted,  and  sentenced  to  be  shot.  General  Harrison,  the  intended 
victim  of  the  murderer’s  dagger,  interposed  and  pardoned  him.  This  generous  man  was  once 
constrained,  by  self-respect,  to  bring  a  suit  for  damages.  The  jury  gave  him  a  verdict  for 
several  thousand  dollars.  He  distributed  one-third  of  the  proceeds  of  the  judgment  among  the 
orphan  children  of  somfe  of  his  fellow-citizens  who  had  died  in  battle  ;  the  residue  he  restored  to 
the  very  man  who  had  injured  him  ! 

Besides  .other  characteristics  of  a  w'ell  regulated  mind,  General  Harrison’s  moderation  in 
the  exercise  of  power  is  conspicuous — a  quality,  it  should  be  remarked,  peculiarly  necessary  to 
the  Chief  Magistrate  of  a  Government  like  ours.  The  powers  conferred  on  him  as  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  Northwestern  army  were  almost  unlimited.  In  transmitting  the  appointment  to 
hun,  the  Secretary  of  War  says:  “You  will  command  such  means  as  may  be  practicable  ; 
exercise  your  own  discretion  ;  and  act  in  all*cases  according  to  your  own  judgment.”  Scarcely 
less  extensive,  practically,  were  the  powers  of  General  Harrison  as  Governor  of  Indiana.  Yet, 
though  he  held  the  public  interests  in  a  firm  unyielding  hand,  in  no  instance  did  he  ever  com¬ 
mit  an  arbitrary  or  oppressive  deed  !  His  practice  has  ever  been  conformed  to  one  of  the  cardi¬ 
nal  principles  of  his  political  creed.  I  shall  give  it  in  his  own  nervous  language  :  “  The  strong¬ 
est  of  all  Governments  is  that  which  is  most  free.” 

.  His  authority,  and  his  exercise  of  it,  in  the  government  of  Indiana,  serve  also  to  illustrate  the 
disinterestedness  of  his  character.  Among  the  powers  appertaining  to  his  office,  were  those 
of  dividing  the  country  into  counties  and  townships,  of  superintending  Indian  affairs,  and  of 
confirming  titles  to  lands.  You  will  readily  see  what  tempting  opportunities  for  acquiring 
wealth  were  involved  in  these  powers.  With  such/  opportunities  “  the  main  pillars  of  the 
democratic  cause',  would  have  become  thanes,  barons,  suzerains,  udallers,  patroons,  princes, 
Croesuses,  Rothschilds,  Barings,  “monopolists,”  “  corporations  of  associated  wealth,’  and  what 
not.  I  had  not  time,  when  treating  of  peculations,  to  go  into  Indian  matters,  or  I  should  now 

3 


34 


ask  you  to  compare  tlie  “  principles  and  policy”  of  the  Administration  and  its  “pillars”  on  that 
subject,  with  the  conduct  of  General  Harrison — the  virtuous  Harrison.  “  You  will  not  be 
surprised,”  though  doubtless  the  “ pillars ”  will  be,  to  learn  that  Williavi  Henry  Harrison 
left  this  field  of  temptation  poor  ;  not  comparatively  merely,  but  positively  poor  ;  so  much  so, 
that  in  after  years  he  was  glad  to  be  made  clerk  of  a  county  court,  to  earn  bread  for  himself 
and  his  family.  This,  to  be  sure,  was  a  large  one  ;  for  he  always  regarded  every  poor  man 
who  came  to  see  him,  especially  an  old  soldier,  as  a  member  of  his  family.  But  did  I  say  temp¬ 
tation  ?  I  recall  the  word.  No  opportunity  of  aggrandizing  himself  indirectly  could  have 
been  a  temptation' to  Harrison,  for  he  had  no  eyes  to  see  it.  The  “Reformers”  would  think 
he  was  *not  only  blind  but  foolish.  He  never  knew  any  title,  except  a  “  moral”  title,  to  any 
thing. 

Such  is  the  citizen  whom  the  Opposition  offer  to  their  country,  as  fitted  for  the  first  place  in 
her  councils :  a  citizen  experienced  in  public  affairs,  intrepid  in  danger,  sagacious  and  circum¬ 
spect  in  council,  prompt  in  action,  moderate  in  power,  energetic,  forbearing,  just,  generous,  and 
kind. 

You  have  seen  that  General  Harrison  is  emphatically  an  honest  max  ;  and  his  honesty 
alone,  in  times  like  the  present,  would  be  a  sufficient  reason  for  elevating  him  to  the  Presidency, 
even  were  his  intellectual  endowments  less  than  they  confessedly  are.  It  would  be  strange  if  a 
man  so  tried  and  so  proved,  were  not  popular.  And  where  are  the  bounds  to  his  popularity  ? 
The  source  of  it  is  truly  and  beautifully  stated  in  half  a  dozen  words  by  his  companions  in  arms, 
in  their  address  to  him  on  the  occasion  of  the  severance  of  Louisiana  from  Indiana.  The  “power 
to  gain  hearts  by  virtuous  actions.”  Our  adversaries  feel  that  he  is  the  cause  of  as  much 
“  alarm”  to  them  as  they*  are  themselves  cause  of  “  alarm”  to  the  country.  They  see  that  the 
nation  is  wakened  to  a  sense  of  the  injuries  and  deceptions  which  have  been  practised  on  it ; 
that  their  system  is  at  once  detested  and  despised  ;  that  their  only  probable,  and  that  not  a  cer¬ 
tain,  refuge  from  public  indignation,  is  in  public  contempt ;  and  that,  when  the  question  is  put, 
as  it  soon  will  be,  to  the  people,  “Will  you  permit  this  Administration  to  continue  in  power  any 
longer  ?”  the  people  will  answer  not  “Better  let  it  be,”  but  “better  let  it  not  be;”  that  the 
people  will  say,  “  our  sufferings  are  [not  z's]  intolerable,”  and  have  been  made  so  not  by  “rascally 
postmasters ”  onjy.  The  faction  which  gained,  and  is  striving  to  perpetuate  power  by  false  pre¬ 
tences,  feel  that  their  candidate  for  the  Presidency  is  as  dead  a  weight  upon  their  cause  as  their 
cause  is  upon  him.  What !  shall  a  man  who  has  been  three  times  discarded  by  his  own  State 
hope  for  the  votes  of  the  other  States'?  Shall  he,  whom  his  own  household  have  “weighed  in 
the  balance  and  found  wanting” — have  branded  as  an  “unprofitable  servant,”  aspire  to  be  again 
a  ruler  of  the  people  ?  Nothing  like  this  has  ever  yet  happened  in  the  Republic,  and  it  is  not 
probable  that  tile  current  of  experience  will  be  reversed  for  the  benefit  of  Mr.  Van  Buren.  As 
to  the  spoils  candidate  for  the  Vice  Presidency  he  cannot,  indeed,  be  said  to  have  lost  the  sup¬ 
port  of  his  own  State,  for  he  never  had  it.  Our  candidate  for  that  office  is  the  pride  and  the 
boast  of  his  State — of  Virginia,  the  land  of  patriots  and  statesmen. 

Mr.  Van  Buren  has  insinuated  that  his  fellow-citizens  were  not  “sober”  when  they  elected 
him.  He  will  find  that  they  are  sober  now.  The  “  second  thought”  has  come,  and  come  Vith 
overwhelming  force.  The  people  were  “  sober”  when  they  entrusted  him  with  the  power  which 
he  has  so  shamefully  abused  :  but  they  were  deceived.  They  arfe  now  undeceived.  His  former 
supporters  are  falling  off  from  him  in  masses.  The  glorious  band  of  conservatives  is  growing 
into  a  multitude  :  a  multitude  which  by  the  side  of  his  original  opponents  will,  in  cordial  union 
and  with  resistless  power,  march  up  to  the  polls,  and  peal  the  political  death-knell  in  his  ear. 

Yes*  fellow-citizens,  our  tyrants  are  alarmed,  almost  pitiably  alarmed.  In  November,  1838, 
as  the  public  documents  inform  us,  in  a  communication  addressed  by  one  high  Executive  officer 
to  another,  on  the  approach  of  a  dreaded  exposure,  the  writer  gave  utterance  to  his  emotions  in 
the  good  old  Anglo-Saxon  ejaculation,  “  God  help  us /”  The  spoilsmen  have  far  greater  rea¬ 
son  now  to  renew  this  shriek  of  despair.  But  it  will  be  in  vain.  God  will  not  help  them. 
No  ;  if,  in  their  present  deserved  extremity,  they  get  aid  any  where,  it  will  be,  not  from  Heaven, 
but — from  another  place.  Thence  they  seem  to  ha$e  received  some  hints  already.  They  have 
“  hesitated”  a  change  in  their  “  principles  and  policy.”  They  afiect  to  slide  a -little  over  to 
Conservative  ground.  But  be  not  deceived.  Be  not  deceived  again.  The  only  change  which 
their  political  necessities  make  possible  in  their  “principles  and  policy,”  is,  a  postponement  till 
after  the  election.  Re-elect  them,  and  they  will  go  on  perfecting  their  work,  and  laugh  at  you 
for  having  believed  their  promises,  of  amendment. 

There  is  no  reason  to  fear  that  the  American  people  will  suffer  themselves  to  be  deceived  an 
more.  Every  hour,  every  minute,  is  adding  fresh  strength  to  the  cause  of  Opposition.  “Tin 
ball  is  in  motion  propelled  not  by  a  single  roller,  “solitary  and  alone,”  but  by  millions  o- 
awakened,  indignant  freemen.  The  patriots  of  the  land  are  rushing  from  every  quarter,  an 
with  loud  acclaim,  to  the  standard  of  Harrison  and  Tyler.  . 

“  And  wild  and  high  the  ‘  Cameron’s  gathering,’  rose ! 

The  war  note  of  Lochiel”  . 


has  been  sounded  'in  the  mountains  of  the  North  ;  the  sound  has  been  echoed  in  the  valleys  of 
the  South  ;  it  has  been  re-echoed  by  the  great  Father  of  waters  in  the  West.  The  “fiery  cross,” 
summoning  the  clansmen  of  the  Constitution,  is  careering  on  the  wings  of  the  wind.  Every¬ 
where  is  heard  the  cry, 

“  Speed,  Malise.  speed  !” 

On — on  they  come; 

“  Their  swords  they  are  countless,  their  bosoms  are  one.” 

•  '  :-w 

They  will  not  disband  till  they  shall  have  achieved  a  victory  memorable  through  all  time ;  till 
they  shall  have  hurled  the  Spoilers  from  the  high  places ;  till  they  shall  have  driven  the  false 
priests  from  the  desecrated  altars ;  till  they  shall  have  raised  up  and  restored  the  Constitution 
of  their  country;  that  Constitution  on  whose  once  glorious  brow,  is  “sorrow  ploughed  by 
shame.”  Then  will  the  angry  shade  of  Washington  be  appeased;  for  then,  the  star-spangled 
banner  which  he  won  from  the  oppressor,  again  will  wave  over  a  land  of  liberty  and  law.’’ 


